Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right. The bill was amended at report stage to permit surrogate mothers to be reimbursed for lost employment income if a doctor provides a letter that continuing to work may pose a risk to her health or to the embryo or the fetus. However, the member is right when he says that it is a clear contradiction of the principle of non-commodifying the reproductive capabilities of women. The principle was presented and included in the royal commission report, and consistently through all of the discussions it has been supported that there should not be commodification of surrogacy.
It is very unusual how it came forward to this place, and it is unusual that the minister would abandon everything that she said on surrogacy and support that motion. At committee it was definitely rejected. In this place, it passed by a small number of votes. I think it was a big mistake and I am sure that attempts will be made to reverse that.
While I have the floor, I also want to point that when I was discussing utilization of embryonic stem cells for research and I said that we have 500, one of the points I forgot to put in, and members might be interested, is that today it was reported that the British have destroyed 40,000 human embryos for research purposes and they have no reports of any successful research as a result of destroying 40,000 human beings. It is absolutely astounding.