Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to stand in the House of debate. I sometimes call it the word factory because our job here is to crank out words which then become part of the permanent record. It is a privilege to stand here and debate.
I would like to begin by saying how very frustrating this is. This is undoubtedly one of the most, if not the most important bill that we will debate in this Parliament. It has extremely large, long term ramifications. It has a huge dimension to the value that we place on human life. I find it very frustrating when I think of what is going to happen.
We have before us in Group No. 2 a number of amendments. Those amendments are all very important amendments. They are amendments which correct the flaws in the bill. I would love to debate with members of Parliament in a meaningful way the merits of these amendments but I guess I will just have to be brutally honest and say that I have a big suspicion that no members are really paying attention to this debate. Very few are actually listening or participating. Very few will actually go back and listen to the debates or watch the tapes later. They are disengaged from what is undoubtedly one of the most important issues facing us. I really regret that and I think that is a huge flaw.
Add to that another flaw. My predecessor, Mr. Brian O'Kurley, who represented Elk Island before I did, and who by the way will be the only other member for Elk Island, since he was there in the first term when Elk Island came to be, because the riding is disappearing. It will be gone.
Mr. O'Kurley told me before the election that when I became a member of Parliament I would find out that my most important work would be done in committees. I came here and found that to be true.
When we are working in committee there will be members around the table engaging in debate with each other and with the witnesses. We actually grapple with these big issues and come up with conclusions and recommendations which are included in the report.
In this particular instance, this very important bill was studied at length by the members of the committee. The committee did a lot of good work and made recommendations. What do we find? Does the government, in finishing off the legislation, take these recommendations into account? Does it look at the actual proposals made by the committee, for example to split some of the conditions of the bill? No, it just motors right along.
As a matter of fact, it is my opinion, and I think I am right, that the decision on where this bill is going is not even made by parliamentarians. I think it is people in the back rooms who have determined how this is going to be. They have persuaded the minister to carry the ball for them here and all the government members will vote on command as they always do.
Members may think I am wasting the time that I have in my speech now but I think it would be wasted no matter what I said because I do not think anybody is listening or anybody is hearing. That is very unfortunate.
There are issues here which are of tremendous importance. I have a tendency, when speaking on issues of this nature to try to deal with very deep principles, really fundamental principles. I think the overriding principle that should drive any bill at all on genetic research, on reproductive technologies, on issues like cloning and medical research, should be, and it should be written in huge bold letters on the top of the bill, that we value explicitly each human life. The value of human life should be our priority when we are discussing these things.
I sometimes think our society has lost, as represented in this Parliament, the sense of the special value and the sacredness of an individual human life. We have lost the sense, certainly, of the sacredness of reproduction if we look at some of the things that have come before this Parliament, such as the issue of child pornography and other pornography, the issue of reproduction, and the issue of marriage and divorce.
I do not know how we can separate a debate on these issues from the deep, abiding, moral structure that has held our country together for many years and is now being seriously challenged and eroded. I believe there is a sacred component to human life that we need to get back to. It is an affront to any individual who has that deep conviction to suggest, even for a moment, that a human being in any form is dispensable for the sake of research.
I do not want members to get me wrong. Even though I place great value on human life, I am also a strong advocate of research and development in medical areas. What I am not in favour of is abandoning the respect for one person's life in order to promote the respect for another. When we do that we go beyond the realm of what we should be doing as humans.
When we think of things like cloning and toying with the genetic make-up of a human being and the setting up of a situation where we get an exact replica of another human being, I think we are dabbling in an area where we ought not to go, because instead of taking genetic material from a male and a female, we have imposed on the new individual the genetic make-up of only one of those individuals, and hence the clone. I believe very strongly that we are dabbling in an area in which we should simply stay away from just on principle.
We can use many other ways to look for cures for diseases and ways of preventing other diseases. There is so much to do. I cannot help but think of several of my friends who are in long term care. Actually my mother is in long term care having gone through a recent hip operation. I think of my younger friend who has premature Parkinson's disease and who is totally disabled and unable to communicate most of the time. He is unable to walk and is in a wheelchair. How desirable it would be to have a cure for that disease. However there are many things we can do without encroaching on the moral dilemmas that a bill such as this brings to our minds.
We need to make sure that our legislation and our work here is such that it is directed toward a proper and moral solution that upholds the value and sacredness of human life. I am committed to that. I wish we all were.