Mr. Speaker, the report stage debate on Bill C-13 deals with assisted reproduction and related technologies. I have four report stage motions in Group No. 1. I would like to address each one to relate to the House precisely why these motions are there as each of them in their own right is extremely important.
Motion No. 6 seeks to amend the definition of donor. Presently the bill that came out of committee states that in regard to an embryo the donor would be a person who is specified in the regulations. In regard to gametes, the sperm and the egg, the donor would be the human being who contributed those. I ask the question, why is it that the donors of the sperm and the egg that created the embryo are not the owners and, therefore, the donors?
One of the fundamental principles of the bill is the non-commodification of human beings. This definition would lead us to believe that the donor of an embryo has to be someone other than the genetic mother and the father of that embryo. Motion No. 6 seeks to establish that the donor of an embryo would be the donor of the egg and the sperm which created that embryo. To do otherwise would in fact transfer the ownership of a human life from one person or persons to others. This is a total contradiction of one of the fundamental principles of the bill.
Motion No. 5 has to do with the definition of chimera. Chimera is basically a multiple joining of embryos where, for example, one had genetic material from two embryos and put them together or one had a human embryo and non-human cells and put them together. These are something more than a basic embryo.
The bill seeks to define chimera. However I noticed that one of the items it did not address was whether or not chimera included transferring human reproductive material into an animal. The bill in fact is silent. The current definition of chimera is silent on whether it is permissible to put human genetic material into an animal. Members should think about it. If the purpose of the bill is to ensure that we are not mixing human and non-human species of genes, then we should clearly amend the definition of chimera with the related clause to mean that in the bill one is not permitted to mix human and animal reproductive material.
The reverse is in the bill, that one cannot put animals into a human embryo, but any activity which would take human reproductive material and combine it with any non-human reproductive material or cells or anything like that would be totally inappropriate and should be corrected in the bill.
Motion No. 9 wants to expand the definition of embryo to include polyspermic embryo. I do not want to get too technical, but this basically is an embryo, with its chromosomes et cetera, that has been affected by more than one sperm. From what I understand from the experts it means that this embryo would not ultimately be viable but is still living. It is like a disabled person. It is like someone who has disabilities. I am sure there are parallels with born children.
By including the polyspermic type of embryo in the family of embryos generally, it would ensure that research on these disabled embryos or non-viable embryos would be covered under the same rules dealing with other human embryos. That is basically to say a human embryo is a human embryo regardless of its abilities or disabilities. That is the purpose of this. I hope the health officials will look carefully at that. They may know that Françoise Baylis recommended that.
I believe that the final report stage motion in Group No. 1 is Motion No. 10 which has to do with defining the human genome. As laid out in the report stage motion, it is the entire DNA sequence of the human species. It is not presently defined. There are very serious concerns about the possibility of polluting the human genome by the combination of non-human and human cells, et cetera. The bill makes reference to human genome but the definition of it is not there and I seek to have that introduced.
Those are the four motions. I hope that I will have the support of the parliamentary secretary, the health minister and others to make those important changes to protect the integrity of the principles on which this bill was based.
In the remaining discussions on the other groups, one issue that will come up often will be the existence of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research guidelines for pluri-potent stem cell research. This agency of the Government of Canada is responsible for public funding of research on a broad variety of matters, including stem cell research.
In these guidelines, which I would be happy to provide members, it says that people donating sperm or eggs for the purpose of in vitro fertilization who also specify that if there are any embryos created and stored that they subsequently do not need for reproductive purposes, must give their informed consent for research purpose. These guidelines go very extensively into the disclosures that have to be made by a fertility clinic and by subsequent researchers as to the authorized uses.
Presently the bill before us does not designate or specify what informed consent constitutes. Informed consent is just relegated to what we always understand, which is informed consent as in the laws of Canada. This material, the guidelines of the CIHR, clearly lays out the importance of having a clear idea for the providers of gametes as to what the terms and conditions are for the use of their reproductive materials if they are not used for their own reproduction purposes. If they are to be used for research, these guidelines say that the donors of the gametes must know. In fact these guidelines say that the researcher has to disclose their conflict of interest, their commercial relationships and all kinds of these things to the gamete providers prior to the donation even being made.
The bill as it comes out says that the donor of an embryo could be somebody other than the parents. It is totally contrary to the guidelines of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. I think we will find in the debate that there are very serious differences between what the Canadian Institutes of Health Research will operate starting on April 1 of this year in terms of public funding and what this bill says.
I believe it is incumbent on the government to explain the real status of these guidelines. We cannot have two different rules of the game. We will either respect the peer review process, the tri-council policy statement or the CIHR guidelines with respect to reproductive technologies, informed consent, commercialization, non-commodification and all other aspects which are clearly laid out. I hope the government will lay out and explain to the House the status of these guidelines on this very important bill.