Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on old Group No. 3 which is now Group No. 4. You are, as always, ingenious in the Chair, sir, to have resolved this problem in such a fashion.
I would like to commend my colleague from Mississauga South for having raised this matter so that we can address the very substantive amendments before the House in Groups Nos. 2 and 3.
Group No. 4 deals with the agency created by Bill C-13, the agency created by Parliament, which would report to the Minister of Health in implementing the bill. Because the bill is such a matter of great importance, the agency would be endowed with very significant powers, powers over life and death and how they define and apply the statutory principles of Bill C-13.
For that reason, the Standing Committee on Health sought, I believe through unanimous consensus, in its report to the draft bill which preceded this legislation, to have that agency report, not to the minister but rather to Parliament.
Let me quote from the submission made recently to the Standing Committee on Health on Bill C-56, now Bill C-13, presented by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. They say in their submission that:
The Committee’s recommendations for a Regulatory Body that is a “semi-independent agency, directed by a Board that reports directly to the Minister of Health, and with mechanisms that ensure accountability to Parliament” seems to achieve a good balance between independence and accountability. In establishing the Agency, the Bill appears to have overlooked reporting to Parliament, or is it assumed that the Minister will report to Parliament? Given what is at stake in the assisted reproductive technologies and related research, accountability to Parliament would seem essential.
I concur with the Conference of Catholic Bishops and with the Standing Committee on Health in its full report. These powers are too great simply to be endowed to an agency which reports to the minister and not to Parliament. I regret that amendments to this effect were not accepted by government members when put by my colleague from Yellowhead at clause by clause at committee. I further regret that such amendments have not been deemed acceptable by the Chair at report stage here. However we in the official opposition will continue to work for greater accountability on the part of the agency.
Let me address some of the specific motions that are before the House in this group.
First, the minister has brought forward Motion No. 52 which seeks to undo amendments made at committee making mandatory counselling with respect to surrogacy. Clause 14(2) of the bill, as currently worded, states:
Before accepting a donation of human reproductive material or of an in vitro embryo from a person or accepting health reporting information respecting a person, a licensee shall
(a) inform the person in writing of the requirements of this Act respecting, as the case may be,
(i) the retention, use, provision to other persons and destruction of the human reproductive material or in vitro embryo, or
(ii) the retention, use, disclosure and destruction of the health reporting information;
(b) ensure that the person [that is to say, the surrogate] receives professional counselling services in accordance with the regulations;
Motion No. 52, in the name of the health minister, seeks to eliminate this provision which would ensure informed consent. I cannot understand why the minister would be against a statutory requirement that potential surrogate mothers must be informed of all risks associated with the procedure by the licensee. It makes no sense to me at all, particularly when one reads in the preamble of the bill that one of its objectives is indeed at subsection 2(d) of the bill, which states:
the principle of free and informed consent must be promoted and applied as a fundamental condition of the use of human reproductive technologies;
If parliament is saying that informed consent must be promoted in the preamble then we ought to be consistent and require licensees to provide that information before surrogates can offer their consent.
There are number of technical motions in this grouping, Motions Nos. 53, 55 and 60, with which I have no objection. Motion No. 61 seeks application of the Official Languages Act, which of course is a standard statutory measure. Motion No. 64 has minor wording which I do not oppose.
I support Motion No. 71 in the name of the health minister which seeks to eliminate an amendment by the committee which says that, at clause 26(2.1):
The membership of the board of directors [of the agency] shall be appointed in such a manner as to maintain a minimum of 50 per cent representation by women.
On liberal bases, I find offensive the idea of assigning gender quotas or quotas of any other nature in a bill. I believe, and I think most Canadians would agree, that people should be appointed based solely on merit and their competence and not on what their gender or ethnicity happens to be. I believe my colleagues in the official opposition will support the minister's amendment to say that appointments should be based not on arbitrary criteria like that but in fact on merit. It would be a very dangerous precedent if this motion found its way into the bill because it would then become a Trojan horse for all sorts of other quotas, very brazen gender quotas, in bills. It would undermine the principle of merit in government appointments.
I want to dwell on Motion No. 72 that would undo the requirement of board members of the agency to come under conflict of interest rules. This is very interesting. My colleague for Haliburton—Victoria—Brock spoke to this. He said he could not understand why the government would be opposed to a provision preventing agency appointees who have a conflict of interest such as an ownership for instance in perhaps a laboratory that performs technologies regulated by the agency or perhaps a pharmaceutical company that produces material used by practitioners who are regulated by the agency. It makes very little sense to me. The current provision which the Minister of Health seeks to eliminate can be found at clause 26(8) of the bill. It states:
No member of the board of directors shall, directly or indirectly, as owner, shareholder, director, officer, partner or otherwise, have any pecuniary or proprietary interest in any business which operates in industries whose products or services are used in the reproductive technologies regulated or controlled by this Act.
That seems fairly straightforward and sensible. I believe it was an all party consensus to include the conflict of interest provision. I believe my colleagues in the official opposition will vote against elimination of this provision prohibiting conflict of interest.
Let me turn finally to some of the measures which ought to have been included in this section on the agency but were not because the government voted against such amendments put forward by the official opposition at committee stage.
For instance, we believe that the mandate of the agency should include the protection of life. It is very peculiar that at clause 22 of the bill we sought an amendment to say--