Debates of Feb. 27th, 2003

Assisted Human Reproduction Act

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

The recorded division on Motion No. 100 stands deferred.

The next question is on Motion No. 103. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

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

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

The recorded division on Motion No. 103 stands deferred.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In disposing of the voice votes on Group No. 6, we dealt with Motion No. 103. I understood that Motions Nos. 104, 105 and 106 were also in Group No. 6 and that we should have had votes on those as well.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Motions Nos. 104, 105 and 106 will be voted on if Motion No. 103 is negatived.

We will now move to Group No. 2.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 13

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 29 and 30 on page 4 with the following:

“(a) create a human clone by using any technique, or transplant a human clone into a human being or into any non-human life form or artificial device;”

Motion No. 14

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing line 32 on page 4 with the following:

“purpose other than human reproduction”

Motion No. 16

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 35 and 36 on page 4 with the following:

“(c) create an embryo from a cell or part”

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

moved:

Motion No. 17

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by adding after line 5 on page 5 the following:

“(d.1) experiment on or harvest an embryo;”

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 18

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 6 and 7 on page 5 with the following:

“(e) perform any procedure or provide,”

Motion No. 20

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by adding after line 20 on page 5 the following:

“(g.1) transplant a sperm, ovum, embryo or foetus of a human being into a non-human life form;”

Motion No. 21

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 21 and 22 on page 5 with the following:

“(h) make use of any human reproductive”

Motion No. 22

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 27 to 31 on page 5 with the following:

“life form;

(j) create a hybrid for the purpose of reproduction, or transplant a hybrid into either a human being or a non-human life form; or

(k) clone a human embryo for research or human reproductive purposes.”

Motion No. 23

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 27 to 31 on page 5 with the following:

“life form;

(j) create a hybrid for the purpose of reproduction, or transplant a hybrid into either a human being or a non-human life form; or

(k) combine any part or any proportion of the human genome with any part of the genome of a non-human species.”

Motion No. 24

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 27 to 31 on page 5 with the following:

“life form;

(j) create a hybrid for the purpose of reproduction, or transplant a hybrid into either a human being or a non-human life form; or

(k) cryogenically store embryos once ova storage techniques are perfected to at least the same survival rate of stored in vitro embryos.”

Motion No. 26

That Bill C-13, in Clause 5, be amended by replacing lines 28 and 29 on page 5 with the following:

“(j) create a hybrid or transplant a hybrid into”

Motion No. 27

That Bill C-13 be amended by adding after line 37 on page 5 the following new clause:

“5.1 No person shall create human reproductive material by the process of parthenogenesis or a similar process.”

Motion No. 40

That Bill C-13 be amended by adding after line 23 on page 7 the following new clause:

“9.1 For greater certainty, therapeutic cloning, also referred to as “somatic cell nuclear transfer”, is prohibited.”

Motion No. 47

That Bill C-13 be amended by deleting Clause 11.

Mr. Speaker, in Group No. 2, 13 of the 14 motions are mine and I would like an opportunity to comment at least to the extent of explaining the intent of each motion. Unfortunately, the rules only permit me 10 minutes. Therefore, I would ask for the unanimous consent of the House to allow me a 20 minute speaking slot.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my seconder, the hon. member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot. Group No. 2 deals with prohibited activities in Bill C-13. It is, arguably, the most important part of Bill C-13 because it deals with an issue, which I think all members would understand, the issue of cloning and whether cloning should be a prohibited activity in Canada.

We know there have been a number of claims that cloning has occurred by the Raelian group, under the company Clonaid. We have no proof of that but we do know the technology exists. In animals, for instance, cloning has been successful in only about 1 out of 200 cases. Ninety-nine cases on average are aberrant or deformed in some very major way.

On that basis alone we can imagine why it is so important for us to ban cloning in Canada. Bill C-13 does not ban cloning. Bill C-13, on the most important aspect of reproductive technologies and related research, does not ban cloning fully, finally, full stop.

There is a provision in the bill that prohibits cloning but we had a royal commission 10 years ago which recommended banning cloning. We had a draft piece of legislation which had a definition of cloning. We had witnesses come before us saying that the definitions were incorrect because they were scientific definitions or medical definitions when they should have been the reverse.

Dr. Dianne Irving presented a complete analysis of the bill. It was translated and provided to all members. It clearly outlined the deficiencies in the terminology of the bill. Two days before the committee finished its committee stage amendments, Health Canada came forward with a new definition of cloning. Can anyone imagine that after 10 years of this subject being on the table, we now want to change the definition of cloning?

Dr. Irving looked at the new definition again. The new definition says that a human clone is an embryo that is a result of the manipulation of human reproductive material or an in vitro embryo contains a diploid set of chromosomes obtained from a single, and that is very important, living or deceased human being, fetus or embryo.

This changed definition now at least addresses what Dr. Ronald Worton said during the review of the draft legislation which was that the terminology was all wrong. However it took the last two days of reviewing the bill at committee for Health Canada to finally admit that it had errors in definition. Can anyone imagine after 10 years still not knowing what the proper definition of cloning is? It is still wrong.

This new definition does prohibit somatic cell nuclear transfer. It does prohibit GLCNT, another form. It prohibits twinning. It prohibits simple as well as demethylated parthenogenesis. If members are going to understand all this they will have to do as I did and invest in a medical and scientific dictionary and thesaurus.

The addition of the word “single” in the definition of clone does not cover all forms of cloning. It does not cover pronuclei transfer. It does not prohibit that kind of cloning. It does not prohibit the formation of chimera and backbreeding. It does not prohibit mitochondria transfer. If we do the work and ask the experts, they will tell us that cloning is not just like Dolly. We take a cell from an adult. We put it in a female egg. We get that DNA and it grows up to be a sheep. It is not simple. There are many examples.

Parthenogenesis. If we were to follow advanced cell technologies in the U.S., scientists took a woman's egg before it entered the process of meiosis, which splits it from 46 chromosomes down to 23. They captured it at 46, interfered with the reproductive process and took it out. They put it in a dish, treated it with chemicals, treated it with a little electrotherapy and tricked this female reproductive egg into believing that it was fertilized and it started to split. It was to become a being. In that case it was an animal.

The technology is that we do not even need a sperm and an egg. It can already be done with just an egg. We have more witnesses to tell us that we cannot do this.

Bill C-13 does not ban cloning, period. We should have had a bill before this place that banned cloning in all its forms and in all its techniques, a full file total ban on cloning; on genetic alteration; on surrogacy for profit; on purchase and sale of human reproductive material. That bill would have passed in the House in one day at all stages and gone through the Senate. We could have had cloning prohibited in Canada with all of the rest of these prohibited activities in one day.

We can still do that. The health committee recommended splitting the bill. The bill is an omnibus bill. It puts upfront the ban on cloning, which it still does not do, then it tacks on to the end regulating fertility clinics, regulating research in Canada and setting up a brand new bureaucratic agency without any expertise and without any teeth to do the job of Parliament. The bill also says that if we change any regulations down the road, Parliament has no right to look at those regulations.

What is happening in this bill, like every omnibus bill, is that it buries a lot of the dirty laundry in the back and puts members in a quandary. I want to vote for banning cloning but if I vote in favour of the bill to ban cloning, I am also voting in favour of doing a bunch of things are wrong. We say prayers at the beginning of every day in this place and we finish off by saying “Give me the wisdom to make good laws”.

The bill in its present form, I regret to say, is not a good law. It is not a good bill. It has more flaws than I can imagine. I thought of many ways to deal with it. Should we maybe refer it back to committee to correct the severe deficiencies that have been identified in report stage debate?

I have not seen members of the government who sponsored the bill come forward to defend the bill or to say why they will not support report stage motions. It is just no to everything. Members of Parliament will have to make a decision. I will have more to say about that later.

There are some housekeeping motions here on which I will not spent my time but I do want to go into Motion No. 24.

[Rob Merrifield, Canadian Alliance, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is a very important subject. It is probably the most important piece of legislation that the House will deal with in the history of the 37th Parliament. I would ask that you have a quorum call to encourage members to come in and listen to my hon. colleague as he has lots to say.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

We do not have a quorum. The bells shall ring no more than 15 minutes.

Call in the members.

And the bells having rung:

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Motion No. 24 adds a new prohibitive activity. This is very important. This comes down to the essence of the bill. The whole controversy on the bill has to do with the so-called existence of surplus embryos not necessary for reproductive purposes. If there were no surplus embryos, then there would be no debate about embryonic stem cell research. How do we deal with this?

Research is going on now to perfect the process to cryogenically store women's eggs. If we could store women's eggs, it would not be necessary to fertilize them once they were harvested from women. The eggs would only be fertilized to the extent necessary for in vitro fertilization. There would not be one surplus embryo ever. We would never have “to throw them in the garbage”, to quote the minister. We do not throw them in the garbage. They are human beings and they die a natural death. Humans do die, and I am not going to stand here and suggest that somehow they do not. Motion No. 24 says that if the science is perfected to store ova then we shall not freeze embryos. Freezing embryos is wrong. Cryogenic freezing of embryos is an awful thing because it dooms half of those human beings to death. Only half of cryogenically frozen embryos will survive the thawing process.

Dr. Françoise Baylis has told us many times that about 500 embryos are presently in storage across Canada. About half of those so-called surplus embryos might be available for research purposes. However, of those 250 frozen embryos, only 125 will survive.

She then goes on to tell us in many articles and in many representations before UNESCO and other places, that of those 125 embryos, only 9 will produce any form of viable stem cell line. Of those nine, only half, maybe five, will actually meet the quality standards required by research.

Do members realize that we would have to destroy 500 embryos to get 5 viable stem cell lines. It is a fallacy when people say that by donating embryos they can be used to help cure people's diseases. That is such a leap that it has no credibility. If one embryo is donated there is 1 chance in 100 that it will actually provide a viable stem cell line that will meet the quality for research purposes. Even then, who knows what the research is for. They would need 100,000 different stem cell lines.

Dr. Françoise Baylis has said very clearly that there are not enough embryos presently in Canada to sustain meaningful research. To back it up, she made application to the Canadian stem cell network telling it that an inventory had to be done to find out whether enough embryos were available to do meaningful research.

Wait a minute. We have a bill before us that would guide research on embryos. Why would we have a bill that seeks to regulate research on human beings without even knowing whether there are enough embryos available to sustain meaningful research? This is backwards. It is another fatal flaw of the bill. That work should be done in advance. We should not be going through this if there are not enough embryos.

I have no doubt in my mind that pre-existing embryos prior to Bill C-13 coming into force will not qualify for the concept of informed consent. People who donated those embryos for research did not know all the facts. They did not know that half of their embryos would not even survive the thawing process. They were not told that they could give up their embryos for adoption. They were not told that the woman would be drugged to the max to harvest the most eggs possible.

This is a women's health issue and then the government turns around and says, by the way, we do not care if it is a women's issue, a health issue, a social or an economic issue, we will not permit women to have at least 50% representation on the board of directors of the agency that is going to make decisions affecting women. How bizarre and how hypocritical to say no to gender balance on a board of directors affecting women's health issues and then on the other hand say there is gender analysis and so on.

If anybody talks about gender issues in this place and if they are going to support the bill, if they are going to support the removal of gender balance on the agency, then they are contradicting their own principles. It is about time for this: If we say we are going to respect gender balance and gender equity, it should be in this bill, and in any bill. There is no bill more important than this one for protection of the health and well-being of women, but the motion by the government is to eliminate the committee's decision that there should be gender balance, at least on the board of directors. Why is that? What is the agenda of those who are pushing the bill?

Watch out if I get excited, Mr. Speaker.

There is another aspect: therapeutic cloning. It sounds pretty good to me, but its real name is somatic cell nuclear transfer. I have a motion in this group which states “for greater certainty”. We want to make absolutely sure there is no somatic cell nuclear transfer, no therapeutic cloning. The reason is that this is the basis on which Dolly the sheep was created, by using that process. The research community is saying it needs to use somatic cell nuclear transfer, therapeutic cloning, because it quite frankly cannot get over the problem of immune rejection by using embryonic stem cells. That community says that if it is allowed to take an embryo, suck out the DNA of that embryo to make it neutral, then take a cell from a prospective patient and put the new DNA in there and give it a few chemicals and a little electrotherapy, it will start to divide and then there would be stem cells that are compatible with the patient's.

Dr. Françoise Baylis has come out totally in favour of therapeutic cloning, i.e. somatic cell nuclear transfer. Dr. Bartha Knoppers came before committee. She has written articles and has sent them to all members of Parliament, saying that researchers want to have somatic cell nuclear transfer.

Seven days after this bill was tabled in the House, Dr. Alan Bernstein, president of the CIHR, was on a TV program. I have the tape. It was a business program. He was talking about the importance of commercialization of genetic technologies and why we should have somatic cell nuclear transfer. That was just one week after the bill was tabled, and his agency is the one that is going to determine which research is done.

Dr. Ronald Worton came before committee and said we had better provide some flexibility in the bill so that the research community could do some therapeutic cloning. I was in a TV debate with him on CPAC. I asked him the question directly: what is the difference between therapeutic cloning and just cloning as people would understand it? He had to admit that there is no difference. The only difference is that when therapeutic cloning or somatic cell nuclear transfer is done, we stop the process. We kill the human being and take out the stem cells. That is the only difference.

Mr. Speaker, if we had an ova, a woman's egg, and I took a hair or a cell of skin from you, I could take the DNA out of that woman's embryo and I could take the DNA out of your skin cell and put it in the embryo. I could then implant it into a carrier, a woman. If we did not do anything and that embryo took, we would have another Speaker. Every cell in the human body contains the entire DNA of a person.

We cannot permit it. We cannot permit somatic cell nuclear transfer now or ever. That is why there is this motion in Group No. 6 about the regulations, which we will not see for two years until after the bill gets royal assent, but the bill also says that any other regulations that come after that, new regulations or amendments to existing regulations, are not going to go before Parliament. That is their hole, that is the back door, and that is where the research community that is controlling Health Canada is going to get somatic cell nuclear transfer so it can clone human beings and drive their agenda, not Parliament's agenda.

It is wrong, Mr. Speaker. For those reasons, and I could give many more, I appeal to members. I wish I had a couple of hours to speak on this. Today I asked a number of members if they would simply come to the House to second a motion of mine so that it could get to the floor. The response was no, they did not understand it. Ninety-nine per cent of the members of Parliament in this place probably do not have a comfort level with this bill.

[An hon. member]

That's the problem.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

That is the problem, because we are going to be asked to vote on a bill and we will not even know what the hell we are voting on. Excuse that word, Mr. Speaker.

I think it is important that we take the time to educate every member of Parliament. We are going to be making life and death decisions.

[Rob Merrifield, Canadian Alliance, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege for me to speak on this important piece of legislation. I have said before that it is probably the most important piece of legislation that the 37th Parliament will have to debate and to discern how to put forward and bring into law in Canada.

I say that because many of the bills that come forward in the House have two ulterior motives. Either they deal with finances, the dollars and cents, the money that people give in trust to us as parliamentarians to spend on their behalf, or they deal with the liberties of this land, the freedoms or the laws and rules.

However, this piece of legislation is not about either one of these. This piece of legislation is about life and death. To say that it does anything less than that is not doing it justice as far as the intensity of the bill is concerned.

This group of motions is very important because it deals with the areas of cloning and embryonic stem cells in many ways. To start with, the motions talk about the whole area of cloning. We have a society that really does not understand cloning other than knowing that the general consensus internationally is that cloning is not appropriate.

As for the reason cloning is not appropriate, we have seen and heard a lot of discussion about it with regard to Dolly, the sheep that was our first cloned animal. Dolly recently had to be put to death because she was in such pain. So we knew that through animal research it was possible to clone an animal and it created a considerable amount of interest in the research community and for the ordinary person walking on the street who would say that it is possible to clone someone now.

However, they do not understand the real problems and what it takes to be able to bring about a cloned sheep like Dolly. People need to discern that it takes at least 200 to 300 embryos before one is actually able to grow in a womb and to be born without defects. Three hundred are needed before there is one good one. For a sheep we might say that is not a real ethical problem because a sheep is an animal, but when it is a human being, a new baby, that is significantly different.

We have had a lot of talk about cloning in the media in the last little while. The Raelian cult suggested that it has three cloned babies. The cult says it will prove that they are clones. We have seen absolutely no proof of that. Whether they are or are not, we are not sure and it really does not matter.

Let me suggest that we speculate and say that perhaps they were born, and with what we know is true about cloning, only one would have been born correctly without being retarded, deformed or somehow malfunctioning, and if they were born they probably would not be able to develop fully. If that is indeed the case, it is probably no wonder that there is some hesitation on their part to bring more media attention to that, because there would be a reaction, with the international community saying that we absolutely do not want to go there. It just so happens that the Raelian cult has a base in Quebec. If the Raelian cult were to have that statistic of one in 300 being born healthy, it would want to go to a country that supports socialistic medicine so that it would not have to pay for the many costs that would be imposed.

There are many reasons why the international community is saying that cloning is inappropriate. One thing that is important to discern is that the scientific community does not really tell the truth when it talks about this whole area of banning cloning, because the ink is not yet dry on the draft piece of legislation and we have the scientific community yelling and screaming that we have to allow therapeutic cloning.

I would suggest that most members in the House do not understanding the difference between therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Certainly most people in Canada do not totally understand the difference between the two. In reality, there is not any difference. It is the same process. The only real difference is that one is killed at 14 days or prior to 14 days and the stem cells are taken.

So when we look at this legislation we have to truly discern what we are trying to do with this whole area of cloning. If we are to bring in a piece of legislation that is going to push us as a society into an area where we are prepared to destroy human life for the sake of research, then we should go very cautiously. If we are going to err, we should err on the side of caution. If we are going to convince Canadians that where we are going is the right and appropriate way to go, then we should be clear and solid in our position.

The fuzziness in this piece of legislation with regard to the whole area of just cloning itself, in this group, is something that should ring all sorts of alarms in our minds and in the minds of Canadians. If people think that we are getting technical about our opposition to what is in the bill and in saying that we need amendments to make it better, let me say that we do it because the legislation as it is does not move us into an area that is safe for our society and protects us from abuse by the scientific community and the potential of where it might want to go with this whole area of cloning. Therein lies the reason we support Motion No. 13.

Let us go to Motion No. 14, which really describes the idea of reproductive procedures. We are saying that when it comes to creating an embryo, it should not be created for the purpose of experimentation on the reproductive side. This is another motion that we support. We do not have any problems supporting the motion because it makes a little clearer the intent as to where we think it should be allowed or should not be allowed.

I would like to get into the area of the embryo and the embryonic stem cell, because they are two areas that are very important in this piece of legislation. One is whether we are going to allow ourselves to destroy human life for the sake of research, and that is the embryo. The other is a regulatory body that is very important because it has to garner the support of the nation as we move forward in the 21st century to determine what we will allow and what we will not.

There are two views on the embryo. One is the view of people with diabetes, and the diabetes association, and people with Parkinson's, leukemia and multiple sclerosis. They all want to use the embryo. They have been convinced that the embryonic stem cell would give them a golden opportunity for some cures.

I would challenge them and I have challenged them. I have had them in my office and talked to them. I have tried to encourage them to look at the science and look clearly at what is actually happening, because this legislation would allow research in this area if it is deemed to be necessary, but we do not determine or define what necessary means, so it allows almost anything.

For those people who think that the answer is in the embryonic stem cell research, I say to them and I challenge them, in 20 years of research, what have we seen come through with the research on the animal embryo? The animal embryo has not produced the kinds of solutions they are looking for and I think this is holding out false hope for them.

Yet when we look at the other side of it, the adult stem cell, we see some tremendous advancements in Parkinson's, leukemia and multiple sclerosis and actual cures in some of these cases with the adult stem cells. It is not just a pipe dream. It is not something that is trumped up. It is something that is there and we can see that there have actually been cures over the last year.

In Canada we have 31 million people, which is a very small number when we think of 6 billion people in the world. With 31 million people and limited resources, we should channel our energy, research and effort into areas that show the most hope and have the most cures. We are not going to solve all the world's problems, but we should take the money we have and apply it to what is most beneficial for Canadians, whose money it is in the first place. I would suggest that this would be in the non-embryonic stem cell research.

The hype and drive of scientists to be able to say that we should use these embryos is something that is alarming to me. It is alarming because I think that there is nothing stopping them from doing the embryonic stem cell research on animals, and they should continue with that. That is why Motion No. 17 is to prohibit the use of embryonic stem cell research. That really is the same as what the health committee said, or what we have said, which is that we should limit it for a three year period, but this legislation has in it a review every three years, so if we prohibit it for now it accomplishes exactly the same thing. So we would support that, because if we are going to err we should err in going cautiously. Although we have waited for a decade to have legislation come forward in this place and we need to proceed with it, we need to proceed in an intelligent way that is in the best interests of the people of Canada. I would suggest that we should make these amendments as they are in the best interests of Canadians.