Madam Speaker, as I said when I started my presentation just a few minutes ago, I am happy to once again be speaking to Bill C-13 and specifically to the Group No. 5 amendments.
It is interesting that all of the amendments in this group are from a member of the governing party. He was very dissatisfied with much of what was and was not in the legislation when it came before the House. He did not feel that it accurately reflected what the committee said in some cases, and he felt that it just was not suitable legislation to deal with such a sensitive, serious and important issue. Because of that, the member brought forth these amendments and I believe all of them will be supported by most, possibly all, Alliance members. These amendments are important to producing better legislation than that which the government has tabled.
It is important for people to take a careful look at what Bill C-13 really is about. It is of course, in very basic terms, about human reproductive technology. It is, as I have said before in presentations, an issue which carries with it some very controversial matters, at least in the way it has been presented to the House.
One of those matters, which I spoke to last time, is whether stem cell research should be allowed immediately on embryonic stem cells as well as adult stem cells. What I said in my presentation last time is that so far, against all predictions, the best results in terms of stem cell research have come in the area of adult stem cell research.
The research has not been focused on adult stem cell research for long. It has been focused for much longer on embryonic stem cell research and, quite frankly, the corporations involved in doing the research fully expected the best results to come from embryonic stem cells. They felt that strongly enough that they put their money into embryonic stem cell research, but reality has shown something entirely different. First of all, it has shown that research on embryonic stem cells has not been productive. There is not one cure or effective treatment to date coming from research done on embryonic stem cells. I am sure that some of the corporations that were involved are extremely disappointed. Of course they are going to continue to push the issue because if they put millions and even billions of dollars into embryonic stem cell research, then they certainly are going to want results to come from that research.
We have seen a much newer type of research on adult stem cells being far more effective. Just over the few months that it has been concentrated on, we already have had some incredible results. We already have found effective treatments in some areas and some things that are very close to cures in other areas, and I think it is really exciting.
I want everyone to know that our party fully supports stem cell research. We think there is an almost unimaginable potential for dealing with some of the most serious diseases and problems that Canadians face and that in fact people around the world face. It is exciting. Anybody who is really interested in science, who has a scientific approach to things and likes to let their mind go sometimes and imagine what can be done, has to be excited about stem cell research, not only about the potential but about how already after such a short time of research the results from adult stem cell research are just remarkable.
It is exciting and I think Canadians should expect that legislation which regulates stem cell research would in no way inhibit that research which is most likely to bring those exciting results.
Our party also says, in fact, that we should not allow research on embryonic stem cells to continue until we can be quite certain that adult stem cell research will not bring about the cures being sought. One of the main reasons we have said to stay away from the controversial issue of using embryonic stem cells is the whole issue of pro-life and pro-choice. This is one of the most divisive issues in the country. What we say is let us not make this legislation something that brings that type of division to the country or that exacerbates that division. Why do we need that? I do not think we do.
Let us give it three years and look at the results from adult stem cell research. So far there have not been exciting results from embryonic stem cell research. In fact, we have seen some huge problems with embryonic stem cell research. It has been found that embryonic stem cells are too unpredictable and during experimentation brain tumours have been produced in mice. There is just too much instability in this. I do not think we would want to try such uncertain cures on humans until such a time that they are well proven. In the meantime, with all the exciting results coming from adult stem cell research we should go full bore with that. I believe that in three years we will probably find that this is where the research should be focused.
My party has talked about some of the problems we have with the bill but there are things we support in the bill as well. It is important to make it very clear that we fully support the bans on reproductive or therapeutic cloning, chimeras, animal-human hybrids, sex selection, germ line alteration, buying and selling of embryos, and paid surrogacy.
We also support having an agency to regulate the sector, although we want changes to that agency. From what I have seen and heard, everyone in the House supports the agency and it is only a matter of how we think it should operate. That can be extremely important. We have to get it right when setting up this agency. There are some amendments to the legislation that deal with this.
We do have concerns about human embryonic research and I have talked about the controversy this causes as well as its instability. Last time, I talked about some of the remarkable and exciting cures that have been found through adult stem cell research.
We also have concerns about the regulatory agency. I will mention a few of the highlights. The bill would create the assisted human reproduction agency of Canada which would issue licences for controlled activities, collect health reporting information to advise the minister, and designate inspectors for the enforcement of the act, which I think we all feel is important. The board of directors would be appointed by the governor in council with a membership that reflects “a range of backgrounds and disciplines relevant to the Agency's objectives”.
One of the highlights of the regulatory agency, which was amended at committee, is that it would require board members to have no financial interests in any business “regulated or controlled” by the act. The health minister is now trying to undo these conflict of interest provisions. We certainly do have a problem with that, as I think most members of committee do who dealt with this issue in depth. When we are looking at this regulatory agency, we should not see the health minister, who is the minister responsible, entirely overruling without any appropriate explanation the good work the committee did. Yet that is what we have seen.
When it comes to this agency we have to undo the harm being done by the minister. We have to respect the committee in that regard. We have to deal with some of these important issues and I will be speaking about some of them later.