Mr. Speaker, before I commence my comments on the Group No. 3 amendments, I want to make a comment on today's confusion in the House, which has led us to this point. I am sure that all members of the House realize that the legislation is probably one of the most important and ground-breaking pieces of legislation to come before the House in a number of years, because it is opening up huge new frontiers to us. It is important not only for us today but for the future of all Canadians who are not yet born. We need to get this right. It is very important for us to be able to not allow the special interest groups or particular biases of any of us to interfere with this process.
I hope that you, Mr. Speaker, or anyone else who is in the chair, will be able to give us full flexibility to deal with this issue. The matter raised by the hon. member for Mississauga South certainly is bang on as far as I am concerned. We need to take the time to hear from all sides on this issue, particularly those who worked so long, and to not make an end run around the legitimate committee process, in which so many members worked for so long, to make sure this is done right.
Having said that, I would like to look at Group No. 3 amendments and related matters as they affect the whole bill.
The mandate of the agency in the bill, at clause 21, is to “promote...the human dignity and human rights, of Canadians”, yet as we stated in our comments on the Group No. 1 amendments, this is really not reflected in the preamble of the bill. If there were a different statement of principle in the bill itself, it would affect the kind of regulatory agency there is and even the purpose and aims of that regulatory agency. The contradiction could be resolved by, for instance, including the following statement in the preamble. By the way, this is taken almost word for word from the majority report of the health committee. It states:
It is hereby recognized and declared that assisted human reproduction and related research must be governed by principles and practices that respect human life, individuality, dignity, and integrity.
I suggest that the inclusion of such a statement in the preamble would go a long way toward setting the proper boundaries for the regulatory agency.
I know from having sat on a number of committees in the House how frustrating it is for us to do a lot of work in which members sometimes in the heat of the debate do have some heated exchanges, but where at the end of the day the good of country is put before all of that. The members come together in some kind of opinion that should be carried through on with legislation. To have the government of course then just ignore those particular unanimous or near unanimous recommendations of committees is a devastating thing. Again, let us get this right and take the time to do it.
Another matter is that the assisted human reproduction agency of Canada will not, according to the legislation, report to Parliament, only to the minister. We have had other situations in other quasi-government agencies where this has been the case. It circumvents the responsibility of Parliament to be the final judge and arbitrator of what is happening according to government agencies. This should be an independent agency that reports to Parliament.
Clause 25 allows the minister to give any policy direction she likes to the agency. The agency must follow it without question. The clause also ensures that such direction would remain secret. If it were an independent agency, answerable to Parliament, such political interference and direction would be far more difficult. We are suggesting that this entire clause should be eliminated for the good of the future work of the agency.
Members of the board should have fixed, twice renewable terms of three years to ensure that the minister simply cannot get rid of a non-compliant board member or keep one on forever. This again was a recommendation of the majority health committee report and should be implemented.
The performance of the agency should be evaluated by the Auditor General rather than the agency itself. Of course in the last number of weeks and in past years, we have seen how important the work of the Auditor General is, not only in terms of uncovering wasteful practices of government departments and agencies but also in making sure that the original intent of the agencies and the government departments that receive taxpayer money are actually kept on track. That kind of review by the Auditor General of course would be made public. We feel that there should be transparency in that regard.
As my colleague from Yellowhead has already suggested, the creation of new fertility clinics, for instance, also should be a very transparent process. The licensing of these new clinics should be something that all of us can see as that process moves on.
In the passing of any new legislation, there is of course the possibility for a particular sector of our economy to perhaps make more money than it used to. It is quite possible that the passing of this legislation will create a fairly lucrative business for a number of related agencies, along with job opportunities. We have to realize that the bill and the setting up of the new fertility clinics could become very big business. Money would become very much a part of that, for example, in regard to the whole role of surrogate mothers and some members wanting to allow surrogate mothers to charge for their services. All of this becomes very much a concern if it turns into a big business and takes out the aspect of really majoring in the public health and good of the country.
The bill also allows for the creation of advisory panels. We believe the bill should mandate that they include some key stakeholders. We would suggest these: the users of assisted human reproductive technology; children born with the assistance of AHR technologies; and people with disabilities. The disability community has had a fairly emotional yet rational response, I believe, to the possibility of new reproductive technologies taking place in this country. I have a little daughter who is quite severely disabled. Certainly one would want to protect the interests of that community, which often finds itself very vulnerable in the face of government regulation and society as a whole. We would suggest that people with disabilities have a large role to play on these stakeholder committees. We would also suggest the following: the scientific and medical communities; the faith communities, to discuss the ethical dilemmas that surround this; professional ethicists and representatives of research ethics boards; private sector providers of services and private research firms; taxpayers and their representatives; and, of course, the provincial and territorial governments.
This again is in accordance with the majority and minority health reports of the standing committee and we would hope that members of Parliament would see fit to include these recommendations in the law.