Debates of Feb. 11th, 2003

Assisted Human Reproduction Act

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The recorded on the division stands deferred.

The next question is on Motion No. 89. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

In my opinion the yeas have it. And more than five members having risen :

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The recorded division on the motion stands deferred.

We will now move to Group No. 6.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

seconded by the member for Yellowhead, moved:

Motion No. 92

That Bill C-13 be amended by adding after line 35 on page 28 the following new clause:

“59.1 Equivalency and enforcement agreements shall be subject to the following safeguards:

(a) the Minister shall be accountable to Parliament for all equivalency and enforcement agreements;

(b) the public shall be actively consulted on draft agreements before they are finalized;

(c) the draft agreements, together with the comments made by the public, shall be tabled in both Houses of Parliament for comments and recommendations;

(d) the text of all final agreements shall be included in the public information registry established by this Act;

(e) all agreements shall be subject to termination or revocation upon reasonable written notice given by either party;

(f) the Minister may intervene under a saving clause that would enable him or her to take any action deemed necessary for the administration or enforcement of the Act;

(g) five years after this section comes into force, and at the end of each subsequent period of five years, a committee of the House of Commons, of the Senate or of both Houses of Parliament is to be designated or established for the purpose of reviewing this Act; and

(h) as a condition precedent to the signing of an agreement, a government that enters into an agreement with the federal government must agree to comply with the same reporting requirements that apply at the federal level. The other government must also agree to transmit the related data to the Agency for inclusion in the federal personal health information registry and the public information registry.”

Motion No. 94

That Bill C-13, in Clause 65, be amended

(a) by replacing line 4 on page 30 with the following:

“(c) for the purposes of section 10,”

(b) by replacing line 8 on page 30 with the following:

“(d) specify-”

[Jean Augustine, Liberal, for the Minister of Health]

moved:

Motion No. 96

That Bill C-13, in Clause 65, be amended by adding after line 15 on page 31 the following:

“(s.1) respecting the notification of the Agency under subsection 15(3.1);”

Motion No. 98

That Bill C-13, in Clause 66, be amended by replacing line 22 on page 32 with the following:

“Parliament shall be referred to the appropriate”

Motion No. 99

That Bill C-13, in Clause 66, be amended by replacing, in the French version, lines 32 to 43 on page 32 and lines 1 to 9 on page 33 with the following:

“(2.1) Pour l'application du paragraphe (2), le comité compétent de la Chambre des communes est le Comité permanent de la santé ou, à défaut, le comité compétent de la Chambre.

(3) Le règlement ne peut être pris avant le premier en date des jours suivants:

a) le trentième jour de séance suivant le dépôt;

b) le cent soixantième jour civil suivant le dépôt;

c) le lendemain du jour où le comité de chaque chambre du Parlement a présenté son rapport.

(4) Le ministre tient compte de tout rapport établi au titre du paragraphe (2). S'il n'est pas donné suite à l'une ou l'autre des recommandations que contient un rapport, le ministre dépose à la chambre d'où provient celui-ci une déclaration motivée à cet égard.”

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

seconded by the hon. member for Yellowhead, moved:

Motion No. 93

That Bill C-13, in Clause 66, be amended by deleting lines 9 to 12 on page 33.

Motion No. 100

That Bill C-13, in Clause 68, be amended by adding after line 40 on page 33 the following:

“(2.1) Notwithstanding subsection (2), any such agreement must be renewed whenever there is a change in any relevant federal or provincial legislation.”

[Rob Merrifield, Canadian Alliance, Yellowhead, AB]

moved:

Motion No. 103

That Bill C-13, in Clause 71, be amended by deleting lines 5 to 12 on page 35.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

seconded by the hon. member for Yellowhead, moved:

Motion No. 104

That Bill C-13, in Clause 71, be amended by replacing line 6 on page 35 with the following:

“person who undertakes or continues to undertake a specific controlled activity with no change in scope or purpose”

Motion No. 105

That Bill C-13, in Clause 71, be amended by replacing line 12 on page 35 with the following:

“until a day fixed by the regulations. Once sections 10 to 13 are in force, changes in the scope or purpose of such controlled activity shall require a licence.”

Motion No. 106

That Bill C-13, in Clause 71, be amended by replacing line 12 on page 35 with the following:

“until 90 days after the coming into force of this Act.”

Madam Speaker, I have a number of motions in this group. I would like to comment very briefly on them and use the remainder of my time to focus on the issue in general.

Motion No. 92 outlines some detailed provisions whereby equivalency agreements can be set up. The bill says that a province has the right to establish its own regulations and legislation with regard to the matters dealt with by Bill C-13. Therefore if it is deemed that the provincial legislation is compatible and covers it adequately, that legislation will override the federal legislation.

This would be an absolute nightmare in my view. The members from the Bloc Québécois probably will quote me on this, but the provinces have jurisdiction with regard to delivery of health care and certainly to the regulation of fertility clinics and researchers, even with regard to whether or not cloning, for instance, might be permitted within a province.

In fact the province of Quebec immediately came out and banned embryonic stem cell research. It was very clear from the beginning that the province of Quebec had some problems with the whole idea of the federal government starting to legislate in provincial jurisdiction.

We must address very carefully some of these equivalency agreements. We have to make sure the provinces are on side because we need to have some uniformity across the system to make sure that the intent of parliamentarians is applied uniformly across the country. Motion No. 92 lays out some features that the equivalency agreements should have, features that presently are not in the bill and which I believe should be.

Motion No. 93 seeks to delete clause 66(5). It says that if a regulation is new or altered after we pass the bill and after we promulgate the regulation, if we come forward with any new regulations or amendments to the regulations, they would not have to come back to Parliament like the original ones. Every regulation to this very important bill, whether it is a new regulation or an alteration of an existing regulation should have the consent and the review of Parliament before it is promulgated.

Motion. No. 94 is a consequential motion to delete clause 11. That is explained by virtue of the fact that Motion No. 47 moves the content of clause 11 to another clause. Motion No. 95 is similar so I will not speak to that.

The next motion I wish to talk about is Motion No. 100. The bill says that if there is a change in federal or provincial legislation, we do not have to renew the equivalency agreement that was entered into with the provinces. It appears to me that if there was a change in federal legislation it should come here. If we are allowing provincial legislation to override it if there is equivalency, then ipso facto, if there is a change in provincial legislation we must also have that amendment reflected in the new agreement the federal government would have with the province.

There has to be continuity. We cannot do something with regulations or changes in legislation when the bill is passed and for the first round but ignore it subsequently. That would allow legislators to get through the back door what they could not get through the front door.

It is a consistency motion. The motion also says that we should be consistent and treat everything the way we would treat in the original bill.

Motion No. 103 is very important. Some members would like to delete clause 71. It has to do with transitional provisions. It says that when this bill is promulgated we will have a situation where the enforced date on prohibited activities will be a date specified by order in council. It would be very shortly after the bill received royal assent. However, certain parts of the bill, in particular controlled activities, will not have royal assent until the agency is established and until the regulations guiding all of this legislation are put in place.

Testimony from the health officials confirmed on two occasions that it would take at least two years. This is very important for members to know. After the bill receives royal assent, it will probably take as long as two years before most of the bill comes into force.

Clause 71, which is a transitional provision, says that once the bill comes into force, anybody who has done anything under the bill at least once during the past year is grandfathered and can continue to do it without a licence and without the scrutiny of the legislation. There is a motion at report stage which says that this is something that is asking far too much. If someone is out there doing a prohibited act or a controlled activity which is not in accordance with the provisions of the bill and the person continues to do it, this is problematic.

I understand that fertility clinics will be licensed and they are an ongoing and continuous activity. I believe that they are aware of this legislation. They will have ample opportunity to make the appropriate application. I believe that they are legitimate operations with no problems under whatever regulations guide them now, which I understand are very limited. If they are reputable fertility clinics, they would apply and they would ensure that they were operating in accordance with the provisions of the legislation.

I tend to support eliminating this transitional provision. It is very qualified, the idea that if one has done it at least once in the last year one is grandfathered. I have never seen that before.

I think the different in force dates is somewhat problematic. The regulations are going to specify these dates. We have no idea when the controlled activities sections will come into force, but it will be a long time.

Members should understand that if this bill were to receive royal assent and the prohibited sections come into force earlier, that means we would prohibit cloning, genetic alteration, surrogacy for profit, and purchase and sale of human reproductive material, but the rest of the bill would not be in force until the agency, the unique body about which I have grave reservations, was put together. I will explain why I have grave reservations.

The Standing Committee on Health had a discussion about conflict of interest. The Minister of Health spoke extensively. She said that there was a provision in the bill which said that one cannot be a member of the board of directors if one has a relationship with a licensee or an application for a licence and that should certainly cover it.

The health committee after doing an extensive review and hearing from witnesses and so on, decided that commercialization and commodification of human reproductive material had to be nailed down very strongly. The committee very strongly supported a new clause which said that one cannot be a member of the board of directors if one has a possible pecuniary interest somewhere down the chain, whether it be a licensee, a fertility clinic, or a researcher. We even talked about pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, those companies that generally would be involved in the whole process of taking research and development and creating patents and pharmaceuticals and all kinds of things.

There is no question that the whole concern is that commercialization may lead to patenting. Patenting may restrict research and may restrict the ability of others to turn that research into therapies and cures.

The minister has not seen the potential impact. I am not concerned about the board of directors' decisions somehow being influenced by fertility clinics or researchers. It is beyond that. I have grave concerns.

If the government has already decided that 50% will not be women, I take it as a signal that the members of the board of directors of this new reproductive agency have already been selected and are just waiting for their appointments. That is the only explanation I can possibly give for why the government would not recognize that the bill has to do with women's issues, with women's health issues and women's social and economic issues, and that it is important that women have at least half the representation on this board. Apparently somebody believes that is not the case.

I hope that members will speak on these very important issues in Group No. 6.

[Rob Merrifield, Canadian Alliance, Yellowhead, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak on this group of amendments. We have been at this for a while and I hope that the people watching across Canada get a sense of the urgency of this piece of legislation, because it is extremely important. It really does go to the heart of the nation and challenges the ethics of our nation as to how far we will go and how we will treat human life, especially at its most vulnerable stage.

That is one of the reasons why it is so important that we stand and speak on this group of amendments. To give people a recapture, we are now on Group No. 6. We started with five groups, but we have split Group No. 2 into two, so Groups Nos. 2 and 3 are yet to be spoken on, and we are now in Group No. 6. There have been three or four days during which we have had the opportunity to speak to these amendments.

We are now starting on the Group No. 6 amendments. Every group has a significant number of amendments and they are not there by accident. They are there because this piece of legislation is so very important to the House and to the nation. Every party in the House has suggested that this legislation should come forward soon so that we can have some parameters around this whole area of reproductive technologies, especially in light of the cloning or supposed cloning that has been happening around the world, or because of those groups that say they are going to do cloning. We need to put some limits on where scientists will go in this whole area of reproductive technologies. Therein lies the urgency for this piece of legislation.

There are some prohibited activities in this piece of legislation, all of us agree, and if we brought in a separate bill that would deal with just those prohibited activities it would pass as fast as the raise in salaries of MPs passed, which was in about 72 hours. We would have it through and we would have some safeguards in place in Canada around this area of reproduction.

That was actually proposed. In fact, I introduced a motion in committee to have that happen and it got shot down immediately for no good reason. Everyone knows that we should prohibit certain activities within this whole area of reproductive technologies, such as cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic, stem line alteration, or chimera or animal-human hybrids. We know that we should be prohibiting all of these areas. I do not think there is any argument across this nation with regard to that. That piece of legislation would pass immediately, but some wanted to piggyback all of the other stuff with the controlled areas into a piece of legislation that challenges the parameters of where we should go as a nation.

If we look to Great Britain as an example, which has a regulatory body similar to the one in this legislation, we see that even under that regulatory regime the ethics in Great Britain and what is allowed under this agency have changed in the last decade. Britain had a very difficult time when trying to stop the idea of therapeutic cloning and in fact it has been allowed as of last spring. Also allowed is the creation of embryos solely for the purpose of research.

These are areas that this piece of legislation would prohibit, and yet we hear a massive cry from the scientific community to hold it and maybe re-examine reproductive cloning. That community is saying that this is not really reproductive cloning but nuclear transfer, so let us call it that instead of cloning to disguise what it is actually trying to do.

We have to be very careful of those who would like to push us into areas that as a nation we should not go into. This piece of legislation will allow that, which is why this group of amendments is so important. I would like to speak to my amendment in particular, Motion No. 103, which speaks to that issue, because in essence it is a get out of jail free card that scientists can use. The power then would not lie with the agency but actually with the governor in council, the cabinet of the House, which would allow them to grandfather in procedures that are deemed to be in a controlled area.

Controlled activities are very important. That is why we would have an agency and that is why we have to go through a tremendous amount of examination and determination to decide whether that controlled activity should proceed.

In fact, when we as a committee first looked at this we had 100 witnesses from across the country and around the world come in and explain to us what should and should not be allowed. At the conclusion of the committee stage, they very eloquently and accurately said that we as a nation should not go into the area of embryonic stem cell research. We were very shy about recommending it at all. It was only at the demand of the minister that we should allow embryonic stem cell research that some committee members changed their minds on this legislation and on how the wording should be as to what we would allow to be under control and what we would allow to go ahead and use embryos for.

The committee was so determined not to allow something that was inappropriate that the wording was very tight. It said that if we are going to go down this road of killing life for the sake of research, then let us say that we should not do it if there is other biological material that could be used for that same research. I think that is reasonable. The committee said “only if no other...material can be used for the...research” should we then entertain the idea of using an embryo.

Some committee members, and I was included, said that this is where we should not go. We called for a three year moratorium on it, to put our emphasis on the non-embryonic stem cells because there is a great amount of research being done there and a great number of cures that have happened, even in the last 12 months. We need to move down that road for the next little while in this whole area of exciting medical research into stem cells that is taking place. Before we go to the embryo, we should move down that road much further so that we can be much more intelligent about where we are going.

If we are to decide on a piece of legislation that will actually determine where we go as a nation, then we should be on the cautious side. If we err in this legislation, it should be on the conservative side. We should be very cautious and tread softly in this area because it has such far reaching implications.

When we get into the area of what the cabinet could allow under this grandfathering clause, we see that it could be abused in an unbelievable way before the legislation is even enacted and before the agency is even up and going. The cabinet could allow scientists to carry on an extreme amount of embryonic stem cell research without any scrutiny of why they are doing it. The cabinet could allow it without any controls as to whether it is in the best interests of the nation and in the best interests of science. These are all the questions that an agency will have to reflect upon and very wisely determine. Whether it is something we should or should not do would all be a moot point under the clause if we do not allow this amendment to go forward.

There should be a limit as to how much should be grandfathered, if we want to grandfather anything at all, and it should not be outside the scope of the legislation we have before us. This amendment is absolutely crucial if we are to do that.

Let us go back to the actual wording of what Bill C-13 is calling for. I mentioned a few minutes ago that our wording was only if no other biological material could be found, but I suggest that this was overturned in this wording. Because of Bill C-13, the wording is not “if no other biological material” can be found. The wording is if it is deemed to be “necessary”. The minister explained to me that the reason why she had to change the wording was that “no other biological material” was so tight and restrictive that they could not define it. Therefore, they used the word “necessary”, meaning if it is necessary to use this material for the research.

I said that was fair, but if we are to use that terminology then let us then determine what “necessary” is. Let us define in the bill what would we sense and decide on as being necessary for carrying on with a procedure that would destroy a human embryo for the sake of research. Nonetheless, the definition of necessary is not in the legislation and if we do not have a definition of necessary, then necessary could mean anything.

That is exactly what was said by the witness at committee, Dr. Bernstein. I asked him directly, because he is a scientist who works with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. He deals with the majority of federal funds that go into this area of research, although not all the funding because Genome Canada has federal funds as well. I asked him what he in his wisdom would determine to be not necessary for the sake of research, if he could think of something that would be disallowed. If we say we should do this research only if it is necessary, then obviously we are implying that some things are not necessary. I was trying to determine where he would draw the line or what line scientists would not cross over. His comment to the committee was that he could not identify something that would not be necessary.

This means that in his mind everything is necessary. If everything is necessary, then what are we doing with the legislation? What parameters does it lay in front of the Canadian people? I would suggest none, and I would say that we must tread very cautiously with this legislation and adopt these amendments or defeat the bill.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to participate in the debate on Bill C-13. I was discussing this issue with the member for Lotbinière—L'Érable, and obviously we are both aware of how important it is.

I want to remind members how much time the committee spent on Bill C-13, and how hard we worked on this most important bill.

Bill C-13 is a bill that affects a wide range of values. It affects the notion of the family, the issue of the availability of leading edge technologies, our perception of sexuality, our perception of human relationships, and also practices prohibited under the Criminal Code.

During the holidays, we all witnessed what happened with Clonaid. It was quite shocking, even if proof was never provided, to learn that it was scientifically possible to clone humans.

The committee heard testimony about how mice, rats and sheep have been cloned. Of course, it was a different kind of success because, in a certain number of cases, premature aging occurred. Other times, the embryo was aborted. But we know how to make clones.

For a long time now, the Bloc Quebecois has been quite concerned about these issues. Shortly after being elected in 1995, and then again in 1997, 2000 and even in 2002, the member for Drummond introduced a bill specifically on cloning.

It is surprising that it has taken so long, and I must blame the government because the Baird commission tabled its report nearly 10 years ago. How could the government have waited so long to take action in an area such as this?

This bill is extremely controversial. There is a whole side to the bill that we fully agree with. Of course, we strongly support a bill such as this in terms of banned practices. With regard to creating chimeras and maintaining embryos in vitro, and therefore outside a woman's body for more than 14 days, we agree that such practices should be banned.

Maintaining an embryo outside the body of a woman after the fourteenth day should be prohibited because the nervous system begins to develop on the fifteenth day. The consensus in the international community is that this causes risks to viability.

We agree with prohibiting chimera. We do not want an embryo into which a cell of any non-human life form has been introduced or vice versa. We are of course opposed to human cloning and we are opposed to cloning for treatment purposes. We understand the need to say that a pregnancy must serve altruistic purposes. No one wants to live in a society where a monetary value is placed on pregnancy or it becomes a commercial transaction.

If the bill dealt strictly with the prohibited activities, we would have quickly voted in favour of it. For each prohibited activity carries ethical considerations.

Why are we opposed to cloning? We are opposed to it because we think that in human development and psychogenesis, it is not desirable for a parent and a child to have exactly the same physical appearance and genetic makeup.

How could we meet our parental responsibilities? How could a child develop normally, in the healthiest manner, if at all the significant stages of his life he is the spitting image of his father or mother?

No one has studied these questions. But account must be taken of the fact that in human development and psychogenesis, this is not something that is desirable.

At the beginning of the year, and last year, the Bloc Quebecois moved a motion to split the bill. We could have voted on the 13 prohibited activities and there could have been provisions under the Criminal Code such that if someone engaged in one of the prohibited activities in a public or private laboratory, there would have been recourse.

Let us not forget that if we had learned in November or October that Clonaid—which has a subsidiary in Quebec or in Canada—had conducted experiments that resulted in successfully cloning a human being, we would not have had any legal recourse.

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, who is the member for Outremont, might not have liked it, but he would not have been able to do anything but make sorry excuses to Canadians because there is no provision in the Criminal Code to punish or lay criminal charges against anyone.

Thus the importance of this bill. Obviously there are colleagues in the House, who shall remain nameless, who would have made this a pro-life and pro-choice debate. I think this is ill-advised. This is not a pro-life and pro-choice debate; this is a debate about prohibited practices and specific regulations.

It is true that under the bill, the regulatory agency could obtain authorization allowing it to conduct research on embryos. Obviously if a woman were to give her informed consent and go to a fertility clinic or any other place that does artificial insemination and say, “If there are extra embryos in my ovulation cycle, I agree to let them be used in a carefully planned research project that has been approved by a research ethics committee”, then in this case it is true that research could be done.

We need to be able to do research on stem cells because there are major degenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's and cerebral palsy, and we must improve the human condition. There may be situations where current reproductive material or knowledge does not allow us to conduct new research without new studies on embryos.

It is true that the use of stem cells requires destroying embryos. Depending on one's definition of life, there may be some who, for religious reasons, or who, because of their convictions, claim that destroying a human embryo is homicide.

However, that is not the case under the law. The Supreme Court has ruled: an embryo is not a human being. A human being exists from the moment it is declared living and viable, outside of its mother's body and once it has taken its first breath. That is the law.

I believe that this is a balanced bill because it requires proof that there is no other way to conduct this research other than using embryos to provide stem cells.

My time has expired. I will have further opportunity to comment during this debate. We have concerns about the regulatory agency and I will comment on these concerns when the other groups of motions are being debated.

[Jason Kenney, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on the motions in Group No. 6 at the report stage of Bill C-13, an act respecting assisted human reproduction.

I am glad we are taking a deliberative approach to these many important amendments that have been placed before the House. I will attempt to address each one in the group in the time allotted to me.

All these amendments deal with the clause in the bill regarding enforcement and the regulations. As we often say, the devil is in the details, and that is why this is an important clause in the bill.

The first amendment brought forward by the member for Mississauga South seeks to place reasonable requirements on enforcement agreements that the Minister of Health may make with other governments, such as provincial governments.

As we know, often in federal law the federal ministry is delegated power by Parliament to make enforcement agreements with the provinces or other levels of government. Clearly, this is the case with criminal law where the power of enforcement for most criminal law is delegated to provincial attorneys general. I believe this is the model contemplated under the bill.

What the member for Mississauga South is seeking to do with Motion No. 92 is amend clause 59 of the bill to ensure that the minister is accountable to Parliament for any enforcement or equivalency agreements with other levels of government, and to ensure that the text of all final agreements be included in a public information registry. In a sense, there are several provisions in this motion that would make the enforcement agreements more transparent and more accountable to Parliament and to the public which we represent.

Most important, item (g) under this motion would require a five year parliamentary review of the bill, if enacted, which is a fairly routine provision in most statutes and ought to be incorporated into the bill. I support Motion No. 92.

Motion No. 94 is very interesting. What the member for Mississauga South is seeking to do in this motion is eliminate the ability of the Minister of Health to make regulations regarding transgenics. Clause 11 of the bill permits transgenics. Transgenics is the very troublesome practice of combining human genetic material, human genomes, with other species. Clause 11 states:

No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations and a licence, combine any part or any proportion of the human genome specified in the regulations with any part of the genome of a species specified in the regulations.

In other words, the bill contemplates and permits, admittedly within the regulatory framework, a very troublesome practice which I believe is an ethical matter and ought to be clearly prohibited in the bill and not simply controlled or regulated. That is part of what the member for Mississauga South is seeking to do through this motion.

What the bill contemplates in clause 11 and elsewhere is the legal possibility of cross-breeding between humans and other animals. We do not need to read the large body of fictitious, science fiction work about the kinds of gruesome consequences of this kind of pseudo-science.

Let me say as a matter of first principle, as someone who has studied philosophy, that even contemplating this reflects a very profound philosophical mistake, a very profound misunderstanding about the nature of man.

Humankind is not a species of the same nature as any other animal species in creation. Humankind is of a different kind altogether. We possess uniquely in all of creation the power of reason, which is expressed by theologians in all traditions as having been created in the image and likeness of God. That is to say, man has a particular dignity rooted in his capacity for reason which makes human life something which cannot be confused with the nature of other non-rational, non-human but sentient life. To suggest that science somehow can or should combine man with beast is, I submit, a fundamental philosophical and ethical error. Therefore I support this motion.

Motions Nos. 96, 98 and 99 are procedural motions brought forward by the Minister of Health to clarify the technical language in the bill pursuant to amendments which were accepted at committee. I will accept all of these motions. They are not substantive.

Motion No. 93 in the name of the member for Mississauga South would delete clause 66(5) from the bill. Essentially this is an effort by the member to enhance accountability when it comes to the regulatory process pursuant to Bill C-13.

Motion No. 100 is an amendment that would require equivalency agreements to be renewed whenever there is a change in any relevant federal or provincial legislation, again enhancing in the bill accountability to Parliament and the people. I will support it.

Motion No. 103 in the name of my colleague from Yellowhead is an important amendment to which he spoke moments ago. It would delete clause 71 which allows the grandfathering of controlled activities until a day fixed by the regulations.

As currently worded, the clause would allow scientists to engage in a controlled activity once before the act takes effect and thereby avoid licensing requirements and prosecution provisions. It could result in a stampede toward controlled activities, such as embryonic research, before the bill takes effect. The current clause is a get out of jail free card which allows the cabinet to exempt controlled activities through regulations.

I submit that controlled activities ought not to be grandfathered. If they are controlled in the bill, that should apply to activities which had begun before the bill's implementation. I support the deletion of clause 71 as contemplated by Motion No. 103.

Motion No. 104 is in the name of the member for Mississauga South. It would specify that the grandfathered activities should only be permitted as long as such activities have no change in scope or purpose, the intent being to prevent researchers from changing the scope of activities after they have qualified for grandfathering under the bill. Again I think this is sensible.

I see I am running out of time so let me just say briefly that I will also support Motions Nos. 105 and 106. Altogether, the amendments seek greater accountability and would seek to control abuses which I do not think is the intent of the legislation to permit. We ought to take these amendments very seriously.

[James Lunney, Canadian Alliance, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, it has been an interesting process working through this very important bill. Bill C-13 is entitled an act respecting human reproduction and related research.

The scope of the bill is very broad and relates not only to in vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction. The intent of the bill is to help people, couples who are having trouble because of infertility to have the families they want. It is because of that the health committee, in doing its work on the bill, entitled the study “Building Families”, which is the focus.

There are many controversial aspects of the bill. Part of it is the related research that spins off as a consequence of the in vitro process. The bill contemplates allowing so-called surplus embryos or left over embryos--frankly, even the terminology is offensive to consider--to be used for research purposes.

The bill discusses important issues which we have yet to debate. The amendments in Group No. 2 will be coming up later, and deal with anonymous donations for example and surrogacy. Donations of gametes and issues like that are also covered in the bill.

The subject today largely deals with some of the regulatory aspects. There are 11 amendments in Group No. 6, among them Motion No. 92 brought forward by the member for Mississauga South. These amendments deal with the regulatory body, the governor in council, how regulations shall be set up and some of the responsibilities of the Minister of Health.

Motion No. 92 brought forward by the member for Mississauga South has a number of subclauses. It deals with the equivalency agreements with the provinces. Various provinces may wish to develop their own bills. The province of Quebec already has some regulatory measures in effect concerning reproductive technology, and other provinces may have some also. The clause deals with equivalency agreements with other provinces. The member has very astutely observed that it is quite a loose arrangement in terms of equivalency and the amendment would tighten up the responsibilities. It specifies what an equivalency agreement would look like and the responsibilities that would come with making such changes.

The hon. member has brought in amendments which are quite reasonable. Motion No. 92 states in part:

Equivalency and enforcement agreements shall be subject to the following safeguards:

(a) the Minister shall be accountable to Parliament for all equivalency and enforcement agreements;

That is a very important clause. Ultimately, what is the purpose of our going through this exercise as a federal institution to develop a law for Canadians if someone is not responsible and accountable to the legislators who put the bill in effect in the first place? The motion further states:

(b) the public shall be actively consulted on draft agreements before they are finalized;

The members of the committee who worked on the bill put a lot of work and effort into it. We heard from Canadians across the country. The committee received the bill in draft form and went to great lengths to tighten up this very important area.

We are dealing with human life. Children will be produced from this technology, children who will want to know about their identity later in life. We are dealing with some very profound emotional and moral issues relating to this research. The minister needs to be responsible and accountable and the public needs to be consulted. The motion further states:

(c) the draft agreements, together with the comments made by the public, shall be tabled in both Houses of Parliament for comments and recommendations;

There are a few other accountability measures mentioned in Motion No. 92. An important one is item (g):

(g) five years after this section comes into force, and at the end of each subsequent period of five years, a committee of the House of Commons, of the Senate or of both Houses of Parliament is to be designated or established for the purpose of reviewing this Act.

That is a very reasonable thing to do. This area of science is expanding at an amazing rate. The possibilities that come out of reproductive technologies are profound and have great scientific and health implications but also great moral implications. It is a very important motion. I hope all members of the House will give it due consideration and will vote appropriately. We certainly will be supporting this amendment.

Motion No. 94 also moved by the member for Mississauga South addresses a very important issue. It deals with the issue of transgenics or so-called chimera. A lot of Canadians are probably wondering what that is all about.

We wrestled with this issue at committee. We might wonder about this and I have raised this question repeatedly. There is a tremendous and resplendent array of genetic material available to us as human beings with some six billion of us on the planet. If we look around, a tremendous variety can be found within the human genome, from the little ones among us to the great tall ones who play basketball for great sums of money, from the ones of us who are a little slow to the ones who are really fast in terms of athletic prowess and ability.

I had the pleasure this week to watch an accomplished pianist at a concert. It was amazing to see that woman sit at the piano and play without looking at a note on a musical score. She could play this tremendous array of music from memory. I watched her hands fly across those keys.

It is amazing what human beings are able to accomplish. All that tremendous ability is available to us within our human genome. I have a hard time relating to why we need to mix animal and human genes. What would we hope to accomplish by putting a gene from a lower life form into a human cell or by mixing cell parts from animals and humans or by mixing genes from animals and humans? The bill allows for this under a licence.

The amendment would change it so that the regulations relating to chimera and transgenics could not be changed by the governor in council or by the minister. That is a very important amendment. If we are going to go this way at all, it needs to be tightened up so that this area is very significantly supervised and regulated.

Motions Nos. 96, 98 and 99 are procedural amendments which we would support. They are tidy-up amendments and we certainly agree with them and support them.

Motion No. 93 is an important amendment. It would delete clause 65 entirely, removing the power of the governor in council to make regulations for carrying into effect the purposes of the bill. Clause 65(bb) would allow the governor in council to exempt controlled activities from the provisions of the act.

There are important reasons that controlled activities in the bill require licences and that violations are subject to prosecution. It is because they involve the creation and manipulation of human life. Cabinet should not be able to simply overrule these regulations in a closed cabinet meeting. We certainly support the motion and feel it is very important.

Turning to Motion No. 103, clause 71 deals with transitional provision and grandfathered activities. This is a very important motion. It would delete lines 5 to 12 on page 35. This, as I said, has to do with the grandfathered activities. An agency that had done an activity as little as once would be allowed to do it if it had done it in the period preceding the adoption of the regulations.

The regulations could take some two years to come into effect. There is another motion coming forward, Motion No. 106, which is related to this that would require 90 days as a limit for grandfathered activities to be accomplished.

I hope all members will give these motions serious consideration and we certainly support the amendments brought forward.

[Jeannot Castonguay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to participate in this debate. Clearly, this is a far-reaching bill affecting almost all Canadians from one end of the country to the other. There is strong interest, because the subject is clearly very complex and very significant. That said, it is very important to have legislation on assisted reproduction and related research activities.

I first want to talk about Motion No. 92. In seeking to apply the same parameters to enforcement agreements and equivalency agreements, this motion is mixing apples and oranges somewhat. The enforcement agreements in the current act are standard administrative agreements set in motion by simple contractual procedures, and are amended or rescinded in accordance with the contract in question.

However, the equivalency agreements change the legal system applicable to assisted reproduction in the province in question, while ensuring equivalency so that all Canadians receive the same protection in terms of health and safety. This bill sets out in detail the approach applicable to important intergovernmental agreements of this type.

I see this is a debate that interests you, Madam Speaker. I am very pleased to see the clear interest you have in this bill.

Several other motions from Group No. 6 address regulation. In fact, regulation is at the heart of Bill C-13. It is the mechanism allowing us to control assisted human reproduction activities in order to assure Canadians that their use of these techniques to build their families will not put their health at risk.

I would now like to talk about Motion No. 93, which suggests deleting subsection 66(5).

Subsection 66(5) simply says that between the time the regulation has been revised by the House committee and finalized, there is no need to revise the regulation a second time even if it has been changed.

However, it is very important to look at subsection 66(4) which in fact requires the minister to lay before the House a statement of the reasons for not incorporating the changes.

We cannot ignore subsection 66(4) and just take the clause that suits us. Nevertheless, all the regulations that are written in the future and all the amendments to the regulations must be laid before the House under clause 66.

In terms of Motion No. 103 to delete clause 71, it should be said that without clause 71 in this bill, all assisted human reproduction activities will have to stop as soon as the bill is passed. Imagine how upsetting this would be to couples who use assisted reproduction services. Without clause 71, fertility clinics will be forced to stop all treatment until an agency is created and the regulations are written. Motion No. 103, if passed, puts an indefinite hold on any hope of having a family through assisted reproduction. Why ask couples to postpone their dream of having a family when this is unnecessary?

Motion No. 103 would only add to the heartache of infertile couples, which goes against the government's intention of reassuring Canadians who use assisted reproduction services.

By reducing to 90 days the time allotted to drafting the regulations, Motion No. 106 does not acknowledge either the scope of the regulatory process or how serious it is. It is too important to be time-limited. It is not some kind of race against the clock. What is important is the quality of the regulations, not the speed at which they are produced. For there to be quality, there must be time taken to consult stakeholders, that is clinic staff, infertile couples and all others involved.

By retaining clause 71, we are acknowledging that regulations on assisted reproduction will require sustained efforts of the utmost quality. By retaining clause 71, we are acknowledging how important it is to avoid any interruption in the assisted reproduction services being provided to all Canadians using such services to create a family.

As for amendments 96, 98 and 99, these are of a technical nature, and aimed at enhancing the clarity and transparency of the bill. In fact, they are in response to the wishes of the Standing Committee on Health, which did such an excellent job on the bill.

Moreover, I must thank all of the committee members who devoted so much time to processing all the information provided to us. My thanks once again to all of the members for their contributions, as well as all the members of this House taking part in the debate.

[Gerry Ritz, Canadian Alliance, Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again to speak to Bill C-13. We face a huge dilemma as parliamentarians on issues of this type that come before us. I guess the bottom line question on Bill C-13 is, when is it okay to use cellular material? There are huge ramifications if we do not get this right this time around.

This particular bill would allow for experiments on human embryos under four conditions. First, only in vitro leftover embryos from the IVF process could be used for research. Second, embryos cannot be created for research with one exception. They can be created for purposes of improving or providing instruction in assisted human reproduction technology. Third, written permission must be given by the donor, although donor is in the singular, and for research on a human embryo if the use is necessary. Necessary is undefined in the legislation so it kind of leaves the door wide open to abuse. Fourth, all human embryos must be destroyed after 14 days if not frozen.

That is what is in the bill. Another huge question is, how do we maintain human dignity for the sufferers of disease who see this as the ultimate answer, as well as the unborn who would become the playground for scientists in trying to resolve some of these issues? How do we come to grips with all of this in the stark reality of legislation?

Part of the problem, in typical government fashion, is that it takes forever to get through legislation with all of these dilemmas attached.

The minister, in her wisdom or lack of it,--and again there has been a change in health minister--has chosen to ignore many of the committee recommendations, and some of the amendments that we see negate the work and effort that the committee spent so many hours on. We just heard the parliamentary secretary welcome the results of the committee and thank it for its work and yet on the other hand the government ignores it or says that it does not like what the committee said and so it will go its own way.

The committee is an all-party committee. It is made up of members who represent their constituencies across the country. They are taking input from the members of their communities, bringing it forward, and in the last write-up of the bill, the minister said no, she is better, the officials know, bang, and away we go. That is where one starts to question the other dilemma causing issues.

During the committee review of Bill C-13 the committee tried to restore some of the recommendations with an amendment specifying that healing therapies should be the object of such research. That is all. There would be no embryonic research for the development of cosmetics or drugs, as we have seen done in other countries, or providing instruction in assisted human reproduction procedures.

That has been left by the wayside and left out. We can look at some of the information that came forward from Suzanne Scorsone, a former member of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies. The government is big on studies and commissions. We have seen hundreds of millions of dollars spent and they are piled up in the basement of the library and nobody ever refers back to them. But there is an excellent quote from her and I would like to read it into the record. She said, “The human embryo is a human individual with a complete personal genome and should be a subject of research only for its benefit”.

We were all embryos once. Of course we were. This is not the abortion question, it goes beyond that. When an embryo is not physically inside a woman there is no possible conflict between that embryo and the life situation of anyone else. There are many across the spectrum on the abortion question who see the embryo as a human reality, and I agree, and hold that to destroy it or utilize it as industrial raw material, is damaging and dehumanizing, not only to that embryo but to all human society. We have crossed the bridge. We are on the thin edge of the wedge and it is a pretty slippery slope from there.

Also in true government fashion as we have come to see here, the governor in council would be used to end run a lot of the recommendations that come out in this bill. Perhaps worst of all, the minister would require that the advisory council of the assisted human reproduction agency, her little group,--itself a good idea as we need some watchdog--to report to her alone rather than Parliament and that the council take every ministerial directive as an order.

It is bad enough that Parliament is basically playing God with this research, but now we are going to appoint the Minister of Health as God herself. That flies in the face of everything that a democracy stands for.

There is a one-time, three-year review. That is it. We can never go back and look at this again. Those could be ongoing reviews. That is what democracy and representation is all about, ongoing review. We see that lacking in so many pieces of legislation that the government has brought forward.

We only have to go back a couple of months to the gun registry. If there had been an ongoing review in a situation like that we would not have squandered a billion dollars. It could not have happened because the review process would have kicked out the flaws in that particular piece of legislation.

We also see that as a red flag in this type of legislation. There is no continuing review. The minister herself controls the whole process through her regulatory agency, which we do not disagree with, but she commands complete and total control over what is going to happen to this legislation afterwards. We see that as wrong.

Some of the amendments in Group No. 6 deal with the idea that deliberations and decisions should be open and accountable. What a good idea. Motion No. 93 would delete clause 66 which would allow the governor in council to write regulations after the fact. That could exempt some experimental activity not specified in the act. Accountability and transparency demand that cabinet not hold itself to the privilege of writing exemptions for activities the bill attempts to restrict. However, the way this legislation is written, that can happen.

Motion No. 100 calls for equivalency agreements that would keep changes between federal and provincial legislation in lock step. We see that particular situation break down again and again with the overlap of government to government. We just saw it during the huge debate on health care costs. We saw the Prime Minister whip the premiers into line by saying take the money or else: “My way or the highway”. Most of them, having to go back and deal with their own constituents, took the cash. They had no choice.

The same situation applies in this legislation where the federal government becomes over and above everyone else. It is provincial legislation that we are trampling on here. The problem we can have with it being provincial is the concern of the ability of children conceived through these artificial means to find out about their heritage. Some provinces would allow it and some would not. Therefore there would be a huge mishmash of problems across the country. Some people could be born in Ontario, move to Alberta, or vice versa, and in one province they could find out their lineage but not in another. There are some huge problems with this.

Motion No. 103 attempts to delete the grandfather clauses that might allow undesirable lines of experimentation to carry on. Parliament would decide against them in this bill. Motion Nos. 104 and 105 are related to this. The grandfathering must be limited in time and require licensing, otherwise we open up a huge problem with everybody leaping into these activities before the bill becomes law, and we are not there yet, this is report stage.

Cabinet could exempt certain activities through regulations. Basically it is a get out of jail free card before this becomes locked down in a legal situation. We have some serious, dangerous subclauses. We saw that with the Kyoto protocol, an accord that we ratified that has not been implemented yet, where the auto sector received an exemption. We would see the same type of thing here; politics at its worse. That is what we have seen in other legislation and it does scare us a bit.

Members of Parliament and people who have made representations on this do not have to have a religious agenda. A lot of that is thrown back at us that it is our conscience not that of our constituents. However, I have had hundreds of interventions, e-mails, letters and calls from constituents. I know everyone has. I have seen some of the headings on the e-mail lists.

Canadians are deeply concerned about where society and our economy is going. They are concerned with chemicals in the environment. They are concerned with genetically modified foods, government secrecy, and with the huge databases we are developing. Canadians need to be reassured that we can take a thoughtful, insightful look at legislation like this and come out with the best for Canadians. We need to have this legislation.

The problem with some of the sections of the bill that the Liberals have rejected would make the advisory council less political. They have shied away from that, and we see that as a huge problem. Politics has no business in this type of legislation, but here we see it again and again. The Liberals even rejected a recommendation to ensure that the board members of the new assisted human reproduction agency would not have conflicts of interest. They have left that out.

Therefore, at the end of the day we have some huge problems with this legislation. The Prime Minister must allow a free vote on legislation like this in order to best serve the interests of our constituents.