Mr. Speaker, thank you for this opportunity, which is indeed an opportunity to express viewpoints that are shared by many Canadians. I too have received numerous calls from constituents in my riding.
A lot of them centre around the fact that the issue is so complex that I do not believe most Canadians really understand the complexities of the bill. I do not understand all the complexities of the bill and I have the privilege of sitting here and listening to many who have researched the issue in depth.
Given the fact that we sit in the midst of those with knowledge, and I know the member for Yellowhead has followed this extensively through the committee and listened to many experts, and given the mere fact we are still seeking a great deal of knowledge as to its implications for our society, I feel that most Canadians will take some time before they bone up on the whole issue themselves.
There is no question Bill C-13 is an attempt to fill a vacuum, a void where no law exists in certain areas in dealing with the matter of stem cell research. There is no question that a clear law is required, with clear prohibitions and clear penalties for those who want to violate those prohibitions. Matters of life and death, human cloning and embryonic stem cell research land squarely in the area of ethics and morality. I think we have heard much of that expressed over the days that the bill has been in the House.
I am trusting that many of the amendments put forward, and those that we are debating today in Group No. 5, will be adopted. I am certainly expressing that viewpoint as one member here and I encourage other members in the House to look closely at these amendments.
Going back to the general context of Bill C-13, we do in fact support a number of aspects of the bill. We support the ban on reproductive or therapeutic cloning. I heard the President of the United States express that very sentiment two days ago: Cloning is out. We support the ban on chimeras, the injection of an animal cell into a human embryo, and on animal-human hybrids, uniting human eggs with animal sperm, although there is some concern right at this point about an animal egg and whether there would be freedom to inject it with a human sperm. It does not cover that aspect of experimentation. We support the ban on sex selection, germ line alteration, the buying and selling of embryos and paid surrogacy.
It is interesting to look at the list of possible violations of ethics, morality and just violations overall and to think that some people would want to engage in that. I guess some would, but I can see out of that list alone that there would be a need for a strong agency. We do support the need to have an agency that will regulate and control those prohibitions and will charge if necessary. In that area we certainly support the list of prohibitions.
The bill in the overall picture deals with the health and well-being of children born through assisted human reproduction: that they must be given some level of priority, that their human individuality and diversity and the integrity of the human genome must be protected.
Those are the highlights of the bill and now I will look at some of our concerns, which I know are addressed in the motions before the House.
We support the recognition that the health and well-being of children born through assisted human reproduction should be given priority. In fact, here is where there is some breakdown now. The health committee came up with a ranking of whose interests should have priority in the decision making around assisted human reproduction and related research. Of course they are the children, the adults participating in these procedures, and the researchers and physicians who conduct assisted human reproduction.
Where this all starts to break down is in the area of those children born through donor insemination or from donor eggs. In this case they are not given the right to know the identity of their parents. There is no protection. There is protection for the donor, but there is no real protection for the child as far as knowing who his or her biological parents were. In this case, the right of the donor supersedes the right of the child, so the child who is born will never know.
If we look at some recent claims, there is ample evidence of children who are now seeking that knowledge, yet the bill would shut that out completely. They would be left, maybe going to their graves, without the knowledge of who their parents were.
The bill's preamble does not provide an acknowledgement of human dignity or respect for human life. Here again we talk in the realm of ethics, of morality. It is devoid of that acknowledgement. The bill is intimately connected with the creation of human life, yet there is no overarching recognition of the principle of respect for human life. That, in our opinion, is a grave deficiency.
In our minority report, we recommended that the final legislation clearly recognize the human embryo as human life, and that the statutory declaration include the phrase “respect for life”. As I explained earlier, just to recognize the human embryo as life would allow clear legislation and a prohibition that would define what scientists can and cannot do when it comes to dealing with that embryo. Right now with the way the bill is outlined, they actually could take that life, that is, kill the embryo and take stem cells from that embryo.
We believe, therefore, that there has to be a substantial inclusion in the preamble of this document: a statutory declaration that would include respect for human life. These amendments cover that.
Embryonic research is ethically controversial and it undoubtedly will divide Canadians. In the House we have been very much aware of the number of petitions that have been tabled pertaining to this research. I encourage all the members of the House, as we on this side already have agreed to do, to support these amendments that are coming up. I know that there will be an interesting debate to follow.