Madam Speaker, I want to address some remarks to Motion No. 72 which deals with subclause 26(8) of the bill.
In listening to the debate today, it is clear that all parties are engaged on behalf of Canadians and that the issues contained in the bill are of great importance to Canadians. As we look down the road into the current new millennium, those issues are leveraged highly with risks and benefits for Canadians and for the human race. How we manage to organize ourselves in the field of cloning and human reproduction will almost certainly affect how the human race evolves.
Motion No. 72 deals with a section of the bill that attempts to deal with conflicts of interest for members of the board of the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency. As we know, that agency is formed for the purpose of issuing licences and dealing with licence applications for those who work in the field of in vitro fertilization and fertility clinics. This set of regulations is established to regulate that field so the interests of Canadians generally can be protected from activities that would not be in our national interest or in the interests of any one particular Canadian.
The original bill contained a provision that would deal with conflict of interest. Conflict of interest rules are put in place generally, as we all know, to prevent self-dealing by those who work in the public arena. Not only is it to prevent-self dealing but it is also to prevent the appearance of self-dealing because the appearance of self-dealing would undermine the integrity of the process, which in this case is the issuing of licences. Of course we want Canadians to have confidence in the integrity of all government processes.
The original bill contained a provision that stated that no member of the board of directors of this licence issuing authority could be an applicant for a licence or a licensee, or a director, or officer, or shareholder, or partner of a licensee or applicant for a licence. That sounds well enough and it goes a good distance to both preventing self-dealing and the appearance of self-dealing. However the health committee, which studied this, came to the conclusion that there was a category of individuals who might, as a director, part time or full time, of this agency come up against this issue of self-dealing or the appearance of self-dealing.
At committee amendments were moved and the committee adopted an amendment that would expand the ambit of the relationships which would prevent self-dealing or an appearance of self-dealing. The relationships were expanded by adding a section that stated:
No member of the board of directors shall, directly or indirectly, as owner, shareholder, director, officer, partner, or otherwise, have any pecuniary or proprietary interest in any business which operates in industries whose products or services are used in the reproductive technologies regulated or controlled by this Act.
This would of course extend to persons associated with pharmaceutical companies or biotech companies.
That amendment is well-intentioned and pushes out the net, the barrier, the protection and the conflict of interest guidelines to exclude persons whose companies, businesses or partners provide services into the reproductive technologies field.
There is an amendment now, I believe it is to Motion No. 72, which would roll back that provision, at least if not all the way, most of the way. I have concerns about that. I believe the committee is well-intentioned and that the provision is well-founded.
I know there have been discussions about the impact of this provision, this paragraph 26.8, on the ability of the government to obtain good, qualified and expert people to sit on the board. As I mentioned earlier, the two top executives on this government agency, the chair and the vice-chair, are full time positions. The other directors are part time.
One suggestions was, if we had conflict of interest guidelines that required board members to file full personal financial disclosure, that it would be a barrier to obtaining good people to come on the board. For a part time position, it is likely that people who are busy in their respective fields would not want to go to the trouble and bother of having to make a whole personal financial disclosure to allow them to become a director, which is in fact just a part time position.
However at the end of the day that decision making body would make its decisions with the part time members. Therefore the involvement of the part time member in decision making and the vote of the part time member in the decision making is not a part time vote and it is not a part time discussion. It is a full time vote and a full time discussion. A vote is a vote. There is no such thing as a part time vote. When they vote on the board of directors, when they make decisions and participate, it is important that Canadians and the people who work in the field see the board as independent and not influenced commercially by undue influence of their partners, the companies of which they are shareholders, their fellow executives or their fellow directors.
I for one believe that the state the bill is in now, as amended by the committee, adequately covers that. Even with the additional conflict of interest guidelines, the board and the agency will find their own way, will find qualified people to serve and they will serve with distinction and do a good job.
I will close by complimenting a number of members around the House for their assiduous work in all aspects of this bill. It is a tough bill.
When I came to the House in 1989, I remember saying that somewhere in this world there was somebody working in a closet laboratory who would ultimately generate a mutant of the human species. It was clear, at least to me and many other people then, that this would happen. Since then we have had Dolly the sheep and other things. We have been a little slow getting to it. The bill has been around for a few years. This is our attempt to put it to bed. I hope my comments on this amendment will be useful to the House.