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.