Mr. Speaker, when we come to the House of Commons we accept that we are going to take responsibility for some very serious issues. This is no longer a simple world and some of the things we have to deal with in the House of Commons today are ethically challenging. There are moral issues and issues such as the possibility of a potential war.
I do not think any issue has had a greater impact on me than this issue. I am not a scientist and I have no scientific background. Like many members of the House, what I have to rely on to make decisions and to think things through is my experience. I add to my experience by listening to the experiences of my constituents.
I do not need to tell any member of the House that the volumes upon volumes of information that flows across our desks every day is almost impossible to keep up with. However, if we read it and listen to debates and talk with colleagues throughout the House, we gain a different perspective and I hope that is what we are supposed to be doing here. We are supposed to be representing all of Canada and those perspectives are very important.
I know there are a great number of members in the House who first and foremost consider this to be a moral issue. I respect that point of view. There are members in my own caucus who feel very strongly about that side of this and there are members across the House and other members of opposition parties who feel equally strongly.
Before I try to explain how I drew the conclusions that I did on this bill, I should give some background. As I said, I am not a scientist but I am a human being and I have lived a few years and have had some experiences. That is what I have based my conclusions on.
When my husband and I started our family, we were blessed with three children. When our first daughter was born we were absolutely delighted, as are all parents with their first child. As parents we learn a little later on that there is going to be some trouble that goes with those children but we do not think about that. We are just overwhelmed with the joy of having these children.
Our first daughter was born looking perfectly healthy, slightly jaundiced, but perfectly healthy and we were very delighted to welcome her into our home. As it turned out, there was a small defect called a biliary atresia and in this case it was called a complete biliary atresia. Unfortunately, even in this day and age it is an incurable problem and the child simply cannot survive. Most children born with this live to be three months old. We were very blessed. She lived to be 10 months old.
From my own perspective as a mother and from my experience of going through that, if someone had offered me a solution that would have saved my daughter and let her live, I would have taken it. Whether that solution was embryonic stem cell or adult stem cell would not have mattered to me at that point in my life; all I wanted was something to take away the pain and to cure her. It was not available and as I said earlier, it still is not available.
For those people in Canada who wonder how we arrive at our decisions, I want to let them know that I can empathize with situations where they have a chronic disease that is going to kill them or they have children born to them who have something terribly wrong with them and they are going to lose them. I know from experience I would have walked through fire to save my daughter as would have my husband, but it was not possible.
When I talk about embryonic and adult stem cell research, I want people to understand that because of that experience, this is not a moral choice for me. I would be lying if I stood in the House and said that there would be no way I would go either way if it would have saved. I would have. From my perspective, I had to do more homework. I had to read more volumes. I had to think this through more thoroughly and I had to talk to people who were wiser than me on the scientific end about what could and could not be done.
My conclusion is that the best way for us to proceed is to stay with the adult stem cell research. My reasons for that have been outlined by many of my colleagues in the House today, but they bear repeating.
Adult stem cells are easily accessible. They are not subject to tissue rejection and they pose minimal ethical concerns.
On the subject of tissue rejection, that is something we have to think about very seriously. When embryonic stem cell research is used, there will be a rejection problem. The person who receives this life-giving stem cell is also going to receive the penalty of having to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his or her life.
I do not have to tell members that we are facing a health care crisis in this country. We will work together and we will find a way to fix it. If there will be people all across the country on anti-immune suppressant drugs for the rest of their lives, let me say that the problems we have now will look minimal in 10 years time.
There has been so much positive progress that it is the reason my party has been adamant that the government could avoid this divisive ethical issue by instituting what the Canadian Alliance has asked for. We want a three year prohibition on stem cell research in order to give the potential for adult stem cell research time to develop.
There have been such tremendous inroads made in adult stem cell research. Why abandon that now knowing full well that we cannot possibly as a country afford to do justice to both kinds of research? We are here now to make a choice. To me the choice is clear. Stay with the adult stem cell research, continue on with the good work that has happened and put all the support and resources we can possibly find behind it. There are literally tens of thousands of people in this country counting on us to make the right decision.
I must repeat for those who are wondering, for me this was not a decision based on moral beliefs. I do agree with my colleagues about the moral issue. My decision was not based on a moral decision. It was based on the evidence put in front of me, the experience that I have had in my own life and the constituents who have come to me and explained the situations they are facing.
One in particular stands out, a constituent with a little boy two years old who has diabetes. He came to my office and he asked me if I would be supporting embryonic stem cell research because from everything he had read, that was the answer. I explained to him the research I had done and what I had learned. He left saying to me to keep the course and insist that it become adult stem cell research. We have a vested interest in finding the right cure for that child and every child in Canada.
There are people all across the country who suffer from Parkinson's disease and all kinds of other terrible diseases. They could probably benefit from the research.
It is incumbent upon us to make certain that we do this right. Doing it right does not mean doing it fast. Once again we have a problem in the House in that a committee that is made up of members from all sides of the House spends valuable time and energy considering all of the issues put in front of it. Then those recommendations come in front of the House or go to the minister and they are all overridden and there is an agenda that is put in place of all of that hard work.
I have to repeat what another colleague said earlier. Given that embryonic stem cell research will require a drug for the rest of the days of the person who has received the stem cell research, is it not possible that there may be an agenda on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies that are the ones that promote and push the embryonic stem cell research in the strongest possible way?
Is there not a possibility that those companies may have a vested interest? Maybe we should take their opinion and water it down considerably and listen more carefully and more closely to Canadians who are trying to deal with this problem on a day to day basis.
We have the capability of finding the solution. I hope that all members of the House will work together to do that.