Mr. Speaker, in my early days of practice I used to facilitate adoptions. One of the key things I felt was very important was to give as much information as possible about the biological parents to the adoptive parents because of the potential for future diseases and things that the child, and indeed the adoptive parents, should know or should be aware of. It is very important that we know as much as we can, and that the child know as much as the child can, about the products of conception.
I am not on the health committee but I have been told something which I cannot confirm, but just having been told this was enough to shock me. It was my information that some infertility clinics in Canada are getting, or were getting and maybe still are, their sperm from United States prisons. The prisoners are donating their sperm at $25 a shot, if I can put if that crudely. It is shipped up here, of course with complete anonymity, and that sperm is being sold to various clinics for a substantially greater amount of money.
That may not be true, I do not know. I think the matter was raised in the health committee. It may not be true, but simply because it was raised, I wonder how many Canadian infertile couples would be happy to know that there is at least a possibility that the sperm donor is a prisoner in an American prison.
It is beyond me that one would not want to have as much information as possible available to the child about the product of conception, how that person was conceived, and what the DNA factors were of that person.