Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to the bill. Initially when the bill was considered, the concern was raised with respect to the ethics of destroying human embryos to harvest stem cells for research. The issues have broadened somewhat from that initial concern and I would like to outline a few that members of the House have mentioned before but which I think are very important to put on the record again.
Despite the fact that Health Canada has already corrected one error in the definition of human clone, the bill still does not ban all known forms and techniques of human cloning. This is probably the essence of many of the ethical concerns that members from all sides of the House have talked about. There were numerous discussions at committee. Non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups and people from the scientific and health communities all expressed concern with respect to this shortcoming in the bill.
The bill permits the implanting of human reproductive material into non-human life forms. The biomedical definition of chimera involves the implantation of reproductive material from a human into an animal, or from an animal into a human. However, the definition in the bill only refers to the latter.
These are two fundamental aspects that I think members of the House are concerned about. On behalf of those on all sides, I want to put on the record that the bill is short with respect to those. Hopefully, it could be expanded upon at some future time.