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.