Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on this group of amendments that have been proposed to the new bill on reproductive technology.
We are very pleased that an agency will be created to oversee the operations of assisted reproductive technology clinics. We think it is very important that there be some oversight. Most other mature democracies have had this for some time. Assisted human reproduction should not be a wide open field simply because from these activities come children whose interests must be protected, both before the fact and after the fact. We think the establishment of an agency is very good news, it is long overdue, and we would like to see it put into place very quickly.
The whole area of assisted human reproduction, as we know, needs to be more tightly regulated. With advances in science and some people pushing the envelope way past where moral and ethical prudence would dictate, we have the need to have tighter regulations to make the whole process safer and more effective for prospective parents to use.
Assisted human reproduction clinics will now have to be licensed and regulated by this agency which is created by this bill. The agency will be subject to access to information so that citizens can have some oversight, some input and some idea how the agency is operating, and it will have some accountability mechanism.
We support the amendment that would require the agency to produce standardized forms and have some standardized information that is required to be presented to individuals who use assisted human reproduction. We think that kind of standardization will be very helpful and necessary as people donate, use and dispose of human reproductive material.
The Auditor General, in February 2001, made it very clear that Canada has serious problems in its sperm banks, such as poor record keeping and ineligible donors. That is pretty scary when we think that the whole purpose of these activities is to produce children who will be affected by any shoddy or inappropriate operations that lead to them coming into being. Uniformity and standardization is extremely important to protect the interests of children.
However the minister wants to undo some of the committee recommendations. We are not in favour of the minister's move to do this.
First, the minister wants to undo a recommendation that people who sit on this agency to regulate assisted human reproductions must not have a conflict of interest. The minister says that it is okay if people who are regulating assisted human reproduction are also players in the whole area.
It does not take a lot of imagination to understand that people with a vested interest in the scope and what is allowed should not make the decisions. They should not be the same people. We do not understand why the minister would say that it is okay for people who have a conflict of interest to make decisions in this important area. The minister is not here to explain why this would be so.