Debates of March 18th, 2003

Assisted Human Reproduction Act

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

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

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

In my opinion, the nays have it.

And more than five hon. members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The recorded division on the motion stands deferred.

We will now proceed to Group No. 3.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 28

That Bill C-13 be amended by deleting Clause 6.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

moved:

Motion No. 29

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

“such services, except for medical or legal counselling services received in support of informed consent.”

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 30

That Bill C-13 be amended by deleting Clause 7.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 32

That Bill C-13, in Clause 7, be amended by replacing line 26 on page 6 with the following:

“for the purchase of an in vitro embryo, a foetus or any foetal tissue; or”

Motion No. 33

That Bill C-13, in Clause 7, be amended by replacing lines 26 to 28 on page 6 with the following:

“for the purchase of an in vitro embryo, or any part of one; or

(b) sell, offer for sale or advertise for sale an in vitro embryo, or any part of one.”

Motion No. 36

That Bill C-13, in Clause 7, be amended by replacing line 28 on page 6 with the following:

“in vitro embryo, a foetus or any foetal tissue.”

Motion No. 39

That Bill C-13, in Clause 8, be amended by adding after line 16 on page 7 the following:

“(4) A donor may not transfer to another person the ownership, or any of the rights or obligations of ownership, of an embryo or any other human reproductive material.”

Motion No. 44

That Bill C-13, in Clause 10, be amended by adding after line 38 on page 7 the following:

“(4) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations, adopt an embryo for the purposes of human reproduction.”

Motion No. 45

That Bill C-13, in Clause 10, be amended by adding after line 38 on page 7 the following:

“(4) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations and a licence, use human reproductive material or an embryo, or any part of one, for the purpose of providing education or training related to assisted human reproduction.”

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 46

That Bill C-13 be amended by adding after line 38 on page 7 the following new clause:

“10.1 (1) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations, pay consideration to a female person to be a surrogate mother, offer to pay such consideration or advertise that it will be paid.

(2) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations, accept consideration for arranging for the services of a surrogate mother, offer to make such an arrangement for consideration or advertise the arranging of such services.

(3) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations, pay consideration to another person to arrange for the services of a surrogate mother, offer to pay such consideration or advertise the payment of it.

(4) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations, counsel or induce a female person to become a surrogate mother, or perform any medical procedure to assist a female person to become a surrogate mother, knowing or having reason to believe that the female person is under 21 years of age.

(5) This section does not affect the validity under provincial law of any agreement under which a person agrees to be a surrogate mother.”

Motion No. 49

That Bill C-13 be amended by adding after line 7 on page 8 the following new clause:

“11.1 (1) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations, purchase, offer to purchase or advertise for the purchase of sperm or ova from a donor or a person acting on behalf of a donor.

(2) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations

(a) purchase, offer to purchase or advertise for the purchase of an in vitro embryo; or

(b) sell, offer for sale or advertise for sale an in vitro embryo.

(3) No person shall, except in accordance with the regulations, purchase, offer to purchase or advertise for the purchase of a human cell or gene from a donor or a person acting on behalf of a donor, with the intention of using the gene or cell to create a human being or of making it available for that purpose.

(4) In this section, “purchase” or “sell” includes to acquire or dispose of in exchange for property or services.”

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

moved:

Motion No. 51

That Bill C-13, in Clause 12, be amended by adding after line 22 on page 8 the following:

“(3) No person shall reimburse a surrogate mother for a loss of work-related income incurred during her pregnancy, unless

(a) a qualified medical practitioner certifies, in writing, that continuing to work may pose a risk to her health or that of the embryo or feotus; and

(b) the reimbursement is made in accordance with the regulations and a licence.”

Motion No. 95

That Bill C-13, in Clause 65, be amended by replacing lines 12 to 14 on page 30 with the following:

“(e) for the purposes of subsection 12(1), respecting the reasonable expenditures that may be reimbursed under a licence;

(e.1) for the purposes of subsection 12(3), respecting the reimbursement of a loss of income;”

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, in view of the substantial number of report stage motions that I have submitted, I would like to ask for the unanimous consent of the House to have a 20 minute speaking period.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Does the House give its consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is unfortunate but I will try to do this.

Motion No. 32 seeks to make an amendment because there is a prohibition in the bill to purchase embryos or to sell them but it does not relate also to fetuses or fetal tissue. I believe the bill should be amended to ensure there is no buying or selling of human reproductive material.

Motion No. 33 states that not only can one not purchase an embryo but one cannot purchase any part of an embryo which itself could be manipulated to become another embryo. It just says any part of an embryo. It is an important scientific fact to be known by members that to deal with human embryos or any part of them should be covered by the bill.

Motion No. 35 adds a new prohibited activity which prohibits the transfer of ownership of an embryo or any reproductive material to another person. There is a provision in the forms of the Ottawa Fertility Clinic whereby if the donors of a sperm and egg for reproductive purposes wish their eggs to be available for research but they have not paid rent for storage, it specifically states that the ownership and the control of that human embryo would transfer to the fertility clinic. It is unconscionable that anyone would contemplate the ownership of a human being is something that we can deal with and that we can transfer ownership of a person. This is a very important motion and I hope that members will support it.

Motion No. 44 adds a new control activity which would permit the adoption of embryos. California has a program called the snowflake program. People who cannot procreate themselves can adopt human embryos which have been in storage and are no longer necessary for the reproduction of the donors of the sperm and egg, in other words the embryo. It is exactly the same as adoption of a born child except that the embryo would be implanted into the woman seeking to adopt and she would birth that child. This is adoption, and I think that the use of human embryos should be considered for adoption certainly way before we would consider for them to be thrown in the garbage.

Motion No. 45 adds a new control activity to the effect that embryos for education and training shall be subject to strict guidelines. Presently the bill states that embryos can be used for research and education purposes. However we are talking about the utilization of human beings. There should be rules and regulations to ensure that it is appropriate and ethical. The change is necessary.

I am sorry I did not get the additional time. I wonder if I could ask yet again if the members would permit me to extend the balance of my time to a full 20 minutes?

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The House is its own master. Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The hon. member for Mississauga South has 16 minutes.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is the last group of debate at report stage. This is a very important bill. We are dealing now with the controlled activities but the linkages are enormous to the entire bill. The prohibited and controlled activities are the most important part of the bill.

I want to lay out for the House my concerns with Bill C-13. I hope that members will seriously consider what I am suggesting today.

First, the bill does not ban all forms of human cloning. If the bill does not ban all forms of human cloning, there is only one disposition of the bill, and that is to put it in the garbage.

I asked an hon. member this morning what he thought about the bill if it did not ban cloning. He said that it did. He said that clause 5 stated that “no person shall knowingly create a human clone”. What could be more simple? Absolutely, but what is a human clone?

There is a definition in there of human clone so that we cannot just take that statement on its face and say that it is a human clone as we all understand a human clone; a genetic identical organism to someone who is either living or deceased. The government's definition of human clone is stated in the bill and it includes an important word. It says chromosomes from a “single” embryo, fetus or fetal tissue.

It came to my attention on February 27 that members of the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to ban human cloning. How did they address it? They said that a human clone could not be created. However, their definition of human clone means human asexual reproduction accomplished by introducing nuclear material from one or more human cells into an embryo. Our bill states from a “single” cell, a single human being. It talks about one.

Dr. Dianne Irving presented materials to the health committee. She said that we had a bill that had problems with its definitions and terms used. With regard to cloning, she laid out that things like somatic cell nuclear transfer, parthenogenesis and twinning, et cetera, were not prohibited by the bill, and Health Canada finally got it.

At clause by clause, after all the witnesses and all the expert testimony, it tabled an amendment to the definition of human clone. However the definition it put in was still not comprehensive. In fact we have a definition now that still permits four different types of cloning. It still permits: pronuclei transfer; formation of chimeras and backbreeding; mitochondria transfer; and DNA-recombinant germ line transfer or, in other words, eugenics.

The parliamentary secretary said earlier that the scientists were moving very quickly and that they were coming up with new ways of doing this. Why have we redefined human clone to be something specific rather than to say that it is asexual reproduction that creates a genetic identical organism to someone who is living or deceased? Why can we not be clear? Why did the officials do that? Why have they changed the medical definition of human clone? Why have they changed the scientific definition of human clone to be something else?

The same exists with regard to chimera. Chimera is the combination of an embryo and a cell. It is also referred to generally between humans and animals that cannot be combined. The bill says that creating a chimera is prohibited. The medical and scientific dictionaries say that chimera means animal into human or human into animal. If we look at the definition in the bill, it says we cannot create a chimera. The definition of chimera is that a non-human life form cell cannot be put into a human embryo, but it does not prohibit putting human cells into a non-human life form, a non-human embryo.

Why has the bill changed the medical definition of chimera? Why has it changed the scientific definition of chimera? The terms and the definitions in the bill are wrong. They should have been reviewed more carefully and they have not been.

The United States bill shows clearly that it must be the asexual reproduction by one or more cells. We only have a definition that says one. The conclusion is this bill does not ban all forms of cloning. It is a problem that must be fixed if this bill is ever going to see the light of day.

For further evidence of that, the New Jersey state assembly also in the last month had a bill to ban cloning. That bill was also withdrawn because Dr. Irving, who advised our health committee also advised the state assembly and pointed out the problems and they could not fix it. They had to yank the bill and will have to rework it to make sure that the bill accomplishes the objectives.

Conflict of interest is a very serious issue in this matter. An agency is going to be set up. That agency is going to have members on the board of directors. Our bill right now has the provision that a board member cannot be a licensee or an applicant for a licence or have a relationship with anyone who wants to be a licensee. That is all it says.

The health committee said that did not go far enough. What we should do is prohibit anyone who has any pecuniary interest in anything that goes on beyond the researchers and fertility clinics. I am talking about pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies and those who are going to commercialize the research of genetic technology. The bill should make sure that there is independence in the board of directors.

The minister has a motion before this place to delete that health committee amendment. That means the Minister of Health would like us to approve a bill which says that pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies can be members of the board of directors of the reproductive agency. Pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies can be members of the board. How ludicrous.

The justice officials advising Health Canada were told, “We would like to see these people file conflict of interest statements and declarations”. What did they say? “They are not paid enough and they will not do it. They are only part time. It is only the president and the chairman that are full time. It is a real inconvenience for the part time members”.

I am sorry, but I thought every member of the board of directors had one vote. I thought every vote was important and that their decisions were important. Why is it that if it is too inconvenient for a member of the board of directors to file a conflict of interest statement that we would not look to someone else who was prepared to put on the table what his or her pecuniary interests were in the research that he or she would be making decisions on?

The bill does not define what is necessary research. It was probably the single most important question that members raised. In the minister's statement to the House on what I believe was Bill C-56 at the time, she said that a research ethics board or a reputable ethics board was going to determine whether it was necessary. That is not what the bill says. The bill says that the agency will determine whether research is necessary. The Standing Committee on Health in the report on the draft bill said that necessary should mean that there is no other biological material that could achieve the intended research objectives.

That makes sense. It probably should be expanded to also include the fact that if research has already happened in that area, we should not be repeating research that has already been done. It makes so much sense but we do not want the definition of “necessary” in the bill. Why is that? We must have the definition of “necessary” to determine whether or not research on embryos or any part of embryos is necessary. We are talking about human beings.

When we looked at this meaningful research, one of the things that came out was that Dr. Françoise Baylis said that only half of the frozen embryos would survive the thawing process. She estimated that there were only about 500 embryos in storage in Canada today and only half of those would be available or qualify for research. Of those 250, 125 would die, would not survive the thawing process. Of the 125, she went on to say that only nine of them would have the ability to generate a stem cell line that would be useful. Of those nine only about half, so let us say five, would be able to produce stem cell lines which met the quality requirements of the researchers.

The situation in Canada right now is there are 500 embryos and out of the 250 that might be available for research, only five or 2% of those embryos are going to generate enough research material. If there are not enough embryos to sustain meaningful research, we should not be killing embryos, period. Why do we not have that?

The science is being developed to freeze or to store women's eggs, the ova. If we have the science to freeze or to store women's ova and only fertilize those eggs that are necessary for in vitro fertilization, there will never be any surplus. Why does the bill not say that should the ova storage techniques be as successful, i.e., only 50% successful, as it is with embryos, this would be the process that would be used and that we could not store human beings cryogenically?

That is one of my motions. I believe we should do it. It would be our full and final declaration that human embryos should never be created for research purposes. If we are able to store ova but we continue to store embryos, it is indeed someone's intent to use human beings for research purposes. It is just not acceptable.

Regarding informed consent, the bill defines consent as whatever the existing laws of Canada say. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research provided guidelines in March 2002. They went so far as to say that consent has to happen before anything happens. Before there is any contribution of any sperm or eggs, they have to be informed. Not only that, they have to be informed of which researchers are going to get the embryo. They have to know what contracts and what institutions that research has a relationship with. There have to be declarations right down the line and there has to be consent at every benchmark point. Those people can back out at any point.

What does the bill say now? The bill will not even define who the donor of an embryo is. The donor of the sperm and the egg are the human beings who donated them but when they are put together to make an embryo, the bill says the donor of an embryo is not the couple who created that embryo; it is whoever we say it is in the regulations. What nonsense.

Does that mean we are going to follow up with the Ottawa fertility clinic and say that if it does not pay its rent, then we own and control its embryo, we own that human being? Where are the principles in the bill? We need to deal with those things.

I cannot do this subject justice in the time remaining. I know other members want to talk and I want to hear them talk.

Finally, this bill permits the implantation of human genetic material into non-human life forms. The minister has put out a piece of paper explaining that we have to do this for research. We should not be putting human life form or any genetic material into non-human beings.

Dr. Baylis at the UNESCO parliamentary round table said that down the road she could see that we would be granting personhood, moral status to hybrids of humans and non-humans. This is where the research mind is. They are doing it because they can do it.

I have worked on the bill. I have done the best that I can. I have nothing left to offer other than that tomorrow, members will be receiving in their offices, in both official languages, in plain language the intent or effect of each and every one of the 50-some report stage motions on which they will be asked to vote so that they will know the essence of those report stage motions.

I believe that many of those motions must be passed in order to save the bill. The bill is on life support and very soon it will be on the death watch. If we do not make substantial progress in dealing with the definitions and in passing many of these important report stage motions, I do not believe that I will be able to support Bill C-13.

[Monte Solberg, Canadian Alliance, Medicine Hat, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and speak to the bill and these motions.

I wish to congratulate my colleague from Mississauga South for the motions he has brought forward, the passion he has brought to the debate, and his analysis of the issues. He has done a tremendous amount of work on all of this and he deserves to be recognized for it.

I wish to acknowledge my friend from Calgary Southeast who is very interested in the bill. He has done a tremendous amount of work on this issue and has done his best to draw public attention to the bill. I also wish to acknowledge the member for Yellowhead, the Canadian Alliance critic for health. They have all done a lot of work on the bill. I appreciate their efforts to draw attention to some of these issues.

When we talk about these issues we should talk about them in a tone of humility. We are talking about the essence of human life here. Sometimes we are completely cavalier in how we approach this whole subject.

In the group of amendments that we have before us right now there is talk about paying people to be surrogate mothers. In the previous group of motions my friend from Calgary Southeast was seeking to prohibit the use of embryos for research and the commodification of human embryos for research. The member who spoke a moment ago was talking about those sorts of things.

When we see where Bill C-13 is going, and how the government is specifying particular ways for industry and in some cases individuals are specifying particular ways for private industry to come and commodify human life, we should be concerned. We should approach this with some reverence and some awe, and appreciate that there is a mystery at the centre of human life and science will never plumb the depth of it.

I am concerned when I see people acting in such a cavalier manner about these things that are greater and above individual people. There is something that springs from something greater and above this. Coming from a Christian perspective I would argue that it comes from God and I caution people to be mindful of this.

As I mentioned before, and I do not know if I said it very well, if a lab technician were asked to dispose of a human embryo would there not be a twinge of conscience there? Would there not be some apprehension about doing that? Would there not be a momentary pause wondering whether or not it was correct to dispose of a human embryo?

Even in the legislation the government says that these embryos may be disposed of up to 14 days. This suggests or implies that after 14 days all of a sudden there is some human dignity involved here.

Why is it 14 days? Why is there that cut-off? It seems rather arbitrary. I wonder if perhaps it does not suggest that the government on the one hand is troubled by the fact that it knows at some point that this thing, a human embryo, has some dignity. The government is afraid to say that it starts when that egg is fertilized. We should be cautious in how we approach this. We should approach it with some reverence and I do not think that we do that.

The member for Mississauga South made some excellent points when he spoke a moment ago. One of the things he has pointed to and it deserves the attention of the House and the public almost as much as anything else in this legislation is his reference to the fact that the bill does not ban human cloning. He has laid out all kinds of examples.

I submit that when the Raelians had a press conference not very long ago, just at the beginning of the year, where they were claiming that they cloned a human person, people were horrified around the country and around the world that this could happen.

We need to move with tremendous speed to ban all kinds of human cloning, to close off all opportunities for human cloning. My friend from Calgary Southeast talked about this as well. We must ensure that any legislation that comes forward does not leave a loophole for this to happen because the nature of science is that if it is possible to do it, scientists will do it. To be fair to scientists, science is about finding the limits of human knowledge. It is about exploring things to the limits of human knowledge. That is what scientists do today and it is what they have always done. They do not always think about the ethical and moral considerations, so if there is any kind of a loophole it will absolutely be found.

The members for Mississauga South, Calgary Southeast and others have pointed to some of these problems. We should be extraordinarily careful about proceeding while we have these kinds of clouds of uncertainty hanging over our heads as parliamentarians. I would hate to say that I had participated in the crafting of a bill that allowed human cloning and I am just worried that perhaps that is where we are headed.

I want to address some of the specific motions in Group No. 3. There are things that my friend from Mississauga has proposed, for instance, that there be no buying or selling of human reproductive materials. Let me clarify that Motion No. 32 would add a prohibition on the purchase of fetuses and fetal tissue.

As I mentioned at the outset, I am concerned again that what this bill would do is allow the commodification, the industrialization, of human life. Some people seem to be okay with that. We have some people who are arguing that it is not a problem to pay surrogate mothers all kinds of money to go out and have children. I personally am deeply concerned about that. Motion No. 32 seeks to stop the selling of fetuses or fetal tissue. Any kind of extra protection we can give to that is very important.

Another thing that the member for Mississauga South is proposing to do is to block the transfer of the ownership of a human embryo from the parents to, for instance, a fertility clinic. The member for Mississauga South gave a very specific example of that. When talking about something as precious to people as their children, or a potential child--depending upon how we look at it, I think of a human fetus as an actual life--members can imagine the potential for lawsuits and disputes if this is not made clear in the legislation. The member for Mississauga South has made it very clear that there is a huge loophole and that we need to find ways to close that up. He has pointed to other problems as well.

In closing, members of Parliament should approach this issue with a little humility, a little awe, and a little reverence for the dignity of human life. We should ensure that all possible prohibitions are in place to ensure that cloning is not permitted in any way, shape or form. We should not allow some of the nightmare scenarios about which many people have already talked about. We should take into account some of the common sense proposals from different members around the House who are speaking on this and advocating particular points of view to ensure that human dignity is respected. That is what we are asking.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have good news for you. I just learned that our colleague Jean-François, who looks after question period for us with the House leader, will soon become a father. Since we are talking about assisted human reproduction, I thought I would share this with my colleagues. I am sure that everyone in this House will want to join me in extending our congratulations to him. Of course, no artificial processes were involved here, as far as I know. The child will be born some time in November. I will come back to that in due course.

This bill underwent a rather long gestation period. We debated it in committee for 18 months, but have yet to see it through report stage. We, and the minister's parliamentary secretary in particular—who is the father of this bill to some extent—look forward to a timely delivery. We look forward to that happy event in the near future.

It has not been easy for the Bloc Quebecois to come up with a position on this bill. Members will recall that the member for Drummond, whom each and everyone of us in the House is fond of, has been in the vanguard of this debate. Back in 1995 she tabled a private member's bill inviting the House to legislate and set out provisions in the Criminal Code to protect us from therapeutic cloning. We now realize, with the passage of time and some perspective, just how much of a visionary the member for Drummond was. I think that is the appropriate word.

During the Christmas break, we were given a scare because of claims made by a company called Clonaid. No one here would have wanted embryo cloning to be possible. However, if what the spokesperson for Clonaid was saying had been true, unfortunately there would not have been any recourse available to Parliament, because the Criminal Code does not contain any relevant provisions.

It is a bit sad that the government has taken so long in legislating. Ten years have gone by since the report of the Baird commission, the royal commission of inquiry on reproductive technologies. I think this is reasonable. We would have expected the government to have introduced a bill to deal with the pressing issues, at least.

True, it is not easy to look at every consideration and every aspect of a bill such as this one. It involves ethical values. One's perspective will depend on one's idea of family.

Of course, we have to bear in mind that when dealing with assisted human reproduction, one in five couples in Canada has fertility problems. Therefore, one in five couples could benefit from assisted human reproduction. We must also acknowledge that for the first time in the history of humanity that it will be possible to reproduce without there being sexual intercourse between two people. That is what is troubling when we look at how we must perceive this debate.

There are other important elements. First, with respect to this bill, the Bloc Quebecois asked, quite early on, that the bill be split.

If it had been, we could have voted rather quickly on provisions to add to the Criminal Code. I think that there is consensus in the House regarding the 13 prohibited activities. Some activities are unanimously condemned by all parliamentarians, be they members of the Canadian Alliance, the government party, the Bloc Quebecois, the Progressive Conservatives or the NDP. We could have voted rather quickly on these activities.

For example, there is the issue of cloning, of maintaining an embryo outside a woman's body for not more than 14 days, because the central nervous system forms after that.

There is the issue of paying consideration to surrogate mothers. There is also the issue of not taking human reproductive material and mixing it with that of an animal to produce what is called a chimera.

There are, therefore, 14 prohibited activities in the bill that members unanimously agree on and that could have been voted on rather quickly.

That is why the Bloc Quebecois had asked that the bill be split. If we had been able to split the bill, perhaps it would have been passed already. Perhaps it would have already gone through the Senate and received, naturally, royal assent. Because we have been asking for many months now that this be done.

Today, we find ourselves in a complex situation because the Canadian Alliance does not like the bill. This bill is like an unwanted pregnancy. And as with all unwanted pregnancies, the father refuses to step forward. The Canadian Alliance is doing everything possible to prevent labour. We are being made to undergo a C-section. People want to force the bill into existence despite the protests of the Canadian Alliance. That is why, if the bill had been split, we would not be in this situation.

The Bloc is also in an uneasy position because we would like there to be provisions in the Criminal Code, but at the same time, we are uncomfortable with the assisted human reproduction agency of Canada. This agency would receive $10 million a year and interfere in provincial jurisdictions.

Allow me to give a few examples. If this agency were created, it would be incompatible with 14 pieces of legislation in Quebec, all of them important to the National Assembly.

One of these is the Civil Code of Quebec. What are the differences between the bill and the Civil Code of Quebec?The Civil Code of Quebec states that under no circumstances will surrogate mothers be reimbursed for expenditures. Pregnancy is an altruistic act. If you want to give life to someone, bring a child into the world, it cannot be for monetary or commercial reasons. It has to be a purely altruistic act. There cannot be reimbursement for certain expenditures.

Bill C-13 states that under certain circumstances, if receipts are provided, the agency may agree to reimburse certain expenditures such as for consulting a psychologist or travel. Some expenditures could be reimbursed. This is not consistent with the Civil Code of Quebec.

There is another extremely significant interference. The bill, especially the regulations that will govern its implementation, sets out not only the conditions under which gametes (the sperm and the ova) will be maintained but the conditions under which health professionals will be able to make technologies available and carry out medical procedures.

The National Assembly—the only true parliament for Francophones in North America—amended the Act respecting health services and social services. Quebec's Health and Social Services Minister was given authority for designating institutions for the exclusive delivery of certain services, including medically assisted human reproduction.

The conflict in jurisdiction is obvious. We have the federal government, which clearly has no valid constitutional jurisdiction over the delivery of services involving medically assisted human reproduction.

I am not denying that the federal Parliament has a responsibility when it comes to health care for aboriginals; the federal government has a fiduciary obligation to aboriginals. I am not denying that the federal government can intervene on matters of defence and the military; the federal government is responsible for the Canadian military. I am not denying that the federal government can intervene when it comes to research; the Supreme Court has recognized it as a valid power.

However, the federal government cannot intervene to provide health care services in hospitals, in research institutions or in university facilities. That is not right.

That is what the Bloc Quebecois finds reprehensible. We want the Criminal Code to contain clear provisions to prevent cloning. Imagine living in a world where everyone started cloning and that threatened every human being's uniqueness.

The bill goes much further than that. It allows for changes to the Criminal Code, but it also makes other changes.

Madam Speaker, given the good news I just announced, would you please see if there is unanimous consent in the House for me to extend my speech for ten minutes? I would appreciate that, and it would be a fitting tribute to the child that Jean-François is expecting.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Does the House consent to allowing the hon. member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve to speak for another ten minutes?