Mr. Speaker, there were a couple of items I would have liked to have included in my speech, but as you may have noticed, there was a bit of a race to get it all done. My friend mentioned Vimy Ridge. I have a couple of quotes from France and Europe that are important.
Philippe Séguin, the president of the National Assembly of the French Republic, remarked in the mid-1990s that the trend toward the enactment of bioethics laws “illustrates a growing awareness around the world that legislators must, despite the difficulties, act to ensure that science develops with a respect for human dignity and fundamental human rights, and in line with national democratic traditions”.
That trend is further illustrated in the preamble to the Council of Europe's convention on human rights and biomedicine, which requires its signatories to resolve “to take such measures as are necessary to safeguard human dignity and the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual with regard to the application of biology and medicine”.
Lastly, even the European Union directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions calls for the need for patent law to respect dignity. It emphasizes this by proclaiming that “patent law must be applied so as to respect the fundamental principles safeguarding the dignity and integrity of the person”.
There is a very well-stated and profound feeling in the world that what we are talking about today says something significant about how we view ourselves as humans and how we view the human species. This issue and the vote, as I noted in my speech, will provide a guidepost, in a sense, on where we are going as we proceed down the road to making laws, whether in respect to abortion or ongoing variations of this particular issue about which we are talking.
We should be dealing with the fundamental issue of what it takes to be a human. That is the starting point. Unfortunately I do not believe the government has taken that into consideration in presenting the bill.