My colleague says some. As long as my colleague has been a Canadian, I can say that the ethic in Canada has been to respect human life from beginning to end, regardless of how fragile it is. That is a Canadian principle and a Canadian value that we had better cherish, because if we do not cherish and protect it we will lose it. We had better be very careful of that. Also, if we can achieve the same thing by doing it through the means of adult stem cells, that is where we should be going. This piece of legislation vaults us into that.
When it comes to the legislation we are dealing with and what has actually been happening at committee, we have many other problems with a piece of legislation that was flawed, the one that is now in the Senate, if this goes through today. We have a serious problem with it because there were a hundred different amendments that we wanted to tighten up.
The other and most important part of this legislation is the agency that will be struck to determine what science goes forward and what does not. This agency has no accountability. In fact, there is a clause in the bill which says specifically that the Minister of Health can dictate to that agency what will be approved or not approved. The agency has no recourse but must follow the instruction of the Minister of Health. That is not transparency. That is not accountability. It is not reflective of being accountable to this chamber and, by being responsible to this chamber, to the people of Canada. If this agency that is being struck does not garner the support and confidence of Canadians, it will ultimately fail. We should be very careful to make sure we put parameters around the agency to ensure that accountability is there.
There are numbers of other different things in the legislation that we are very concerned about. Donor anonymity is of great concern to a number of people. Really the bill was not about embryonic stem cell research necessarily, it was about building families. It was about putting some parameters around the reproduction part of the fertility clinics that are trying to have young couples conceive children when they are having difficulty doing so. That is very noble. In fact, our report reflected that. We said we should change the name of the report from “all about science” and we should say what it is about. It is all about building families. We named our report “Building Families”, because that is what it should be.
However, in building families, who is going to protect the interests of the unborn child if not our committee and if not this legislation? We have said that the right of the child should supersede the right of those who are donating the egg or the sperm. I think that is just a principle that should be there. If we do not fight for the right of these children to know where they come from, no one will. That is something that was debated at committee at length with all kinds of individuals. I remember very clearly a beautiful, young, 19 year old lady who came to our committee and said she did not know who her father was. When she walks down the streets she looks at every man and wonders who is her father.
There are no parameters in this country about how many times one can even donate sperm. There are no limits on it; it is uncontrolled as it presently is. There is no way in this piece of legislation that we either limit the number or determine how the individual who is conceived and born out of this is to know their biological makeup. We do not believe there should be any liability that follows this. Just the knowledge of who someone is biologically, I think, is a fundamental of human life and is something that the child should know.
The idea of surrogacy in this legislation, the idea of renting a womb to be able to conceive a child, is something we find repugnant in the sense that if someone believes they want to help an individual conceive a child, then it should be done from the most altruistic motives, not because someone wants to make a buck. This piece of legislation can vault us into that because it allows for the payment for surrogacy. If we allow for the payment for that, even so much as to pay the individual for their lost salary during the time they are away having the child, we are saying that is a problem. We are strongly against that and see it as something that should not be taking place.
Then we come to the whole idea of cloning. It is interesting that when we talk about cloning and we look at this piece of legislation, a lot of times we say that maybe this should be called the cloning bill. In some ways it should. Because the bill should be split right down the middle. We said that right from the very beginning. It has two tracks.
One is to deal with the prohibitions, things that as a nation and in this House we would collectively in a minute say that we should not allow: human and therapeutic cloning, germ line alteration, and chimera hybrids, which are animal-human combinations of creating life. Those we find repugnant.
The reason that cloning is so repugnant is that one out of 200 to 300 are actually born alive and healthy. If we remember, Dolly the sheep was born out of cloning technology, but it takes 300 Dollys before we get one. Even Dolly the sheep was found out to be aging prematurely and therefore had faults. But there were another 300 that never made it, that were born handicapped, mentally retarded or whatever. I do not mean that sheep are mentally retarded, but I am saying that if we translate what we know of sheep to humans we are going to have a serious problem. It is repugnant to do this. Most of the nations around the world are saying that we should not go there.
What I find astounding on the whole idea of human cloning is that I do not know many nations in the world that say that human cloning should be allowed, but I do know that in the United Nations this fall there was a debate on this same issue of human cloning and whether we should we do something internationally to either allow it or not allow it. There were actually three motions put forward at the United Nations.
One motion coming from Costa Rica, which had garnered the support of 60-plus countries, would ban human and therapeutic cloning and would reflect our own bill, the one before us.
What happened at the UN was really interesting.
Another motion came forward out of Belgium, which had garnered the support of about a dozen countries. It said we should ban just reproductive cloning, but not therapeutic, which would not reflect the bill that is before our committee and the bill that is now in the Senate. It is interesting that Canada originally supported Belgium, which went against its domestic position, if that is in truth what its position is actually going to be under this bill. That is what would reflect the bill. They said no, that we should not; they supported the Belgian one.
Another motion that came forward was the first motion voted on. It was out of some of the Arab countries and said, “Hold it, this is a little bit complex. Why do we not just put it off for two years?” It is interesting that when it came to a vote at the United Nations, Canada refused to vote on it. Canada abstained from the vote. Because of that, it was a tie vote and we lost it. It was to put it off for two years.
It is unbelievable that we would not stand on the principle of supporting the actual domestic position on the international stage. Canada should hang its head because of what we have done internationally and for the message we are sending internationally on this issue.
It is unbelievable how complex this piece of legislation is. When one talks to individuals on the street and says this is a bill on reproductive technologies and starts getting into the issues, people's eyes glaze over. It is very complex. Even those who were on the committee and listened to all the witnesses were just nicely getting into it and understanding the complexity of the legislation.
I am trying to boil it down in as close to layman's terms as I possibly can get and explain it as simply as I can so that this House and those who are watching will understand what this legislation would actually do to us as a country.
At one stage, I even went to you, Mr. Speaker, and asked for an emergency debate on this.
At another stage, I thought maybe the thing to do was to bring forward a motion at committee to split this piece of legislation, because that is indeed what we should be doing. If we were to take the two lines I said earlier that we should be working on, one on the prohibitions and the other on the regulatory side of it, and if we brought forward a piece of legislation on just the prohibitions, it would pass in the blink of an eye. In fact, I have said that it would pass faster than the raising of salaries of members of Parliament did in this House, which took 72 hours. I think that is what we should be doing.
We should be splitting this piece of legislation as fast as we possibly can and bring that forward. In light of that, I think the bill that is now coming back after prorogation and going to the Senate should be stopped. We should not go forward with it.
I am wondering what to do. I sent a letter to the Senate and I am truly hoping that the Senate will do the right thing by giving this a sober second thought. I talked to Senator Kirby and members of his committee. I am hoping that they will do the right thing and not just rush this bill through before the election, but truly give it sober second thought. It is extremely important that we do that. It is extremely important that they actually have a free vote on this in the Senate, not like was done here.
Even though it was not a free vote, there were many members on the other side who voted against this piece of legislation because of its volatility and what it will do to us as a country. It is very important that we split the bill, that we stop this one, and we bring another piece forward to put the limitations on it.
I move:
That the amendment be amended by adding:Bill C-49 an act respecting the effective date of the representation order of 2003.