Réal Ménard

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, February 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleagues. Maybe I will ask for consent again in five minutes.

When the then Minister of Health, who is the current Minister of Industry, defended the bill before the committee, he reminded it that each restriction corresponded to values in Canadian and Quebec society. I think it would be wise to remember this.

For instance, we do not want it to be possible to predetermine the sex of a child through genetic manipulation. We do not want a parent or a couple to be able to say, “I want to bring a child into this world, but only if it is a girl; I only want to have girls”. This might be acceptable for preimplantation genetic diagnosis of certain degenerative diseases, but that is different.

Why do we not want the sex of a child to be predetermined? Because we believe in equality of individuals. No one in the House thinks that men are superior to women, certainly not the member for Berthier—Montcalm. No one here believes that women are inferior to men. We believe in the intrinsic equality of men and women.

Even if technology or genetics made it possible to select certain genes that are responsible for specific characteristics, for example if a father wanted to have a daughter with blue eyes and blond hair—which is possible with today's technology—we do not want this to happen either; that is called reproductive selection and the bill prohibits this. We believe that discrimination must be avoided. All human beings are equal; we cannot use genetic manipulation except to prevent the transmission of diseases that, in some cases, affect very specific individuals or skip a generation. Those are the extremely important values that are at the heart of our concerns.

Again, setting aside criminal law, the Bloc Quebecois finds it difficult to see legitimacy in what is happening and in what such a bill sets out to do.

Let us move on to research, which is very important. In the case of some degenerative diseases, we could improve people's lives. It is true that some aspects of the research require the use of stem cells.

The member for Châteauguay has taken an interest in these issues; I would like to thank him for the material he sent me. Let us examine this issue of stem cells.

An embryo has about 150 cells that have the distinctive feature, in the first moments of conception of an embryo, of being extremely malleable and they can be used to regenerate tissue.

We know that, in principle, dead cells cannot be revived. Indeed, the dead cells of people suffering from cerebral palsy remain dead. Except that stem cell research could make it possible to use these cells to regenerate certain tissues.

This is true for cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis, and we were also told about the need to do research on stem cells for diabetes. This is extremely important. We know that diabetes affects an increasing number of Canadians. There may be hereditary predispositions to diabetes, as well as factors related to obesity, determinants of health. The food that we eat plays a critical role.

Stem cell research must be allowed, but it must be monitored. This bill would allow such research, with a protocol approved by an ethics committee, provided it is demonstrated that it is not possible to conduct research on other genetic material.

I see that my time is almost up. So, I will conclude by saying that stem cell research is extremely important. I think it would have been imprudent on the part of Parliament to say that we do not want any kind of research to be conducted on stem cells.

Remember those witnesses who told us that, in the fifties, the use of insulin was frowned upon. Yet, today, no one would question the progress that has been made with the use of insulin.

So, the bill had to achieve a balance between stem cell research and a total and uncompromising ban on reproductive technologies and cloning.

I must remind hon. members that some activities are not compatible. Would the Chair be kind enough to see if I could get an additional five minutes?

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, February 27th, 2003]

We particularly do not want, I am being told, to clone the Minister of Immigration, and I think that we can all agree on that.

For these reasons, we must be cautious. Given the importance of this debate, Mr. Speaker, I wonder if you could seek the consent of the House to grant me another five minutes to finish my remarks.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, February 27th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the motions in Group No. 2 concerning Bill C-13, formerly Bill C-56 which in turn, as the hon. member for Drummond will recall, once was Bill C-47.

It is especially difficult to speak on this kind of issues since, as we know, the debate raises so many questions. Given that the motions in Group No. 2 which we are debating deal with prohibited activities, I would like to remind the hon. members that the Bloc Quebecois would have liked to see the bill divided in two. There is basically not much rationale. One could ask: Why do we, in the Canadian Parliament, get to vote on a bill concerning the provision of services in health care institutions?

The reason the government claims that Bill C-13 is legitimate is because it criminalized a certain number of practices. I moved a motion a few months ago calling on Parliament to split the bill. Today, from what I have heard, several political parties, including the Liberals even, realize that the Bloc Quebecois was absolutely right. You might say that this is not the first time that the Bloc Quebecois has enlightened this House. No it is not, nor will it be the last. Nonetheless, it would be better if we could say, “Yes, let us stick to criminal law, for which the federal government has a responsibility.

The public was quite astonished between Christmas and New Year's when Clonaid tried to have us believe—it still has not provided any evidence—that cloning was possible.

The Bloc Quebecois has had a longstanding interest in reproductive technologies. I am especially pleased to point this out because my colleague, the member for Drummond, is in the House today, and this House should applaud her. As early as 1995—and I call on the Alliance members to join in the applause as well—and in 1997 and 2000, the member for Drummond introduced a private member's bill. This took some foresight. The Baird Commission had produced its report. We knew that because one couple in five had fertility problems, technological and medical solutions to those problems had to be explored. The member for Drummond, relying only on her courage and her science, introduced a bill. There happened what happened. Unfortunately, the government did not cooperate as much as it should have and at the time we did not have a system whereby all bills were automatically deemed to be votable as soon as they were introduced by any one of our colleagues.

It is pretty sad to think that if we vote on this bill, the Bloc Quebecois will be torn. We do want provisions included in the Criminal Code as soon as possible. We are talking about cloning but there are 12 other prohibited activities in the bill. But at the same time, can we accept the creation of a regulatory agency, which will interfere in areas of great sensitivity for the provinces?

I will give a few examples. As we know, the Government of Quebec is one of the best governments ever to have been in power since the quiet revolution. This government run by Bernard Landry listed the pieces of legislation that would be inconsistent with the agency, if it were to be established.

Of course, we could talk about the regulations. These are more important than the bill itself. I will come back to this. Let me however set out the inconsistencies between the bill and existing legislation in Quebec.

In Quebec, we have chosen to consider pregnancy as an altruistic act. Wanting to help someone have a child or to do so ourselves is an altruistic act.

It is out of the question for this act to become a business transaction, for a monetary value to be placed on it.

As it stands however, the bill provides for the reimbursement of certain expenditures incurred in connection with the pregnancy, if receipts can be provided. This is fundamentally inconsistent with a philosophy of intervention found in the Quebec civil law.

Another inconsistency has to do with the fact that, as we know, the Quebec government has legislation respecting health and social services. It would pretty strange for it not to, given that the provincial governments are responsible for providing health care services.

What would it mean if the bill were passed? The fact that a power currently vested in our Minister of Health and Social Services, namely the power to designate institutions for the exclusive delivery of certain services, would be taken over by the regulatory agency should certainly be of concern to my hon. colleagues. That is in section 112. It is unacceptable for the federal government to act this way.

The regulations would prescribe not only the conditions under which gametes are to be preserved, but also the qualifications of health professionals to carry out insemination procedures.

This is a matter of interference, and what is the most upsetting to the Bloc Quebecois. If, tomorrow morning, we learned that a public or private laboratory in Calgary, Montreal, Quebec City or the Maritimes had been involved in experiments with the potential to lead to therapeutic or human cloning, there would be nothing in place to deal with it. Neither the Minister of Justice nor the Minister of Immigration would have any recourse, because there is none in criminal law.

At the same time, however, what can we expect of a regulatory agency? We are faced with a problem on which all MPs need to reflect. The member for Trois-Rivières is extremely eloquent on this point when he talks of it in private—and only seeks an opportunity to do the same in public. The problem is that the federal government wants to use health for nation building. The Romanow report is very clear on this.

It is not possible to accept the creation of a regulatory agency with considerable powers, including those concerning professional qualifications of people who are governed by regional bodies of the Government of Quebec.

To repeat, a minimum of 14 acts are incompatible with the creation of this agency proposed by the federal government.

That said, I would like to take this opportunity to say that I personally believe that research has a role to play here. The bill states that therapeutic cloning and cloning for reproduction are prohibited.

Why? It is because we want to promote the extremely important value that each of us is unique. If we put out a call in the Greater Montreal or Greater Ottawa region for someone like the Minister of Immigration, we would not be successful. Each person is unique. We have our own values and personality, and this is especially true for the Minister of Immigration. But I would not want to say too much about his personality for fear of violating the charter even if, in some respects, the Minister of Immigration is likeable.

That said, why are we opposed to cloning? It is because we cannot imagine that parents can raise children who are their exact copy and that, in terms of personal development, a child could be their exact copy. It is not possible.

[The Budget, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, does the minister know that the Quebec government has just recently created the “Ça bouge après l'école” program, the precise purpose of which is to keep youth physically active. Consequently, what is the minister waiting for to transfer the Quebec government its share of the funding?

[The Budget, February 24th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, according to the budget, the federal government will invest $45 million over five years to increase participation in sports so that children and youth can engage in physical exercise at school.

Can the Minister of Health tell us how she intends to reach youth in schools, when she has no constitutional authority to go into the schools?

[Health, February 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, the innovative pharmaceutical industry spends $40 million a year in drug review fees. Does the minister believe that she is able to meet the review deadlines and, if not, should Health Canada not reimburse the review fees for lack of efficiency?

[Health, February 18th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, a few years ago Health Canada promised to improve the drug approval process. The drug safety review process now takes 717 days and as a result, patients here have to wait for access to new treatments that are already available elsewhere.

Can the minister explain why, eight years later, Health Canada still has not reached its objective of conducting new drug reviews within 365 days?

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, February 11th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to participate in the debate on Bill C-13. I was discussing this issue with the member for Lotbinière—L'Érable, and obviously we are both aware of how important it is.

I want to remind members how much time the committee spent on Bill C-13, and how hard we worked on this most important bill.

Bill C-13 is a bill that affects a wide range of values. It affects the notion of the family, the issue of the availability of leading edge technologies, our perception of sexuality, our perception of human relationships, and also practices prohibited under the Criminal Code.

During the holidays, we all witnessed what happened with Clonaid. It was quite shocking, even if proof was never provided, to learn that it was scientifically possible to clone humans.

The committee heard testimony about how mice, rats and sheep have been cloned. Of course, it was a different kind of success because, in a certain number of cases, premature aging occurred. Other times, the embryo was aborted. But we know how to make clones.

For a long time now, the Bloc Quebecois has been quite concerned about these issues. Shortly after being elected in 1995, and then again in 1997, 2000 and even in 2002, the member for Drummond introduced a bill specifically on cloning.

It is surprising that it has taken so long, and I must blame the government because the Baird commission tabled its report nearly 10 years ago. How could the government have waited so long to take action in an area such as this?

This bill is extremely controversial. There is a whole side to the bill that we fully agree with. Of course, we strongly support a bill such as this in terms of banned practices. With regard to creating chimeras and maintaining embryos in vitro, and therefore outside a woman's body for more than 14 days, we agree that such practices should be banned.

Maintaining an embryo outside the body of a woman after the fourteenth day should be prohibited because the nervous system begins to develop on the fifteenth day. The consensus in the international community is that this causes risks to viability.

We agree with prohibiting chimera. We do not want an embryo into which a cell of any non-human life form has been introduced or vice versa. We are of course opposed to human cloning and we are opposed to cloning for treatment purposes. We understand the need to say that a pregnancy must serve altruistic purposes. No one wants to live in a society where a monetary value is placed on pregnancy or it becomes a commercial transaction.

If the bill dealt strictly with the prohibited activities, we would have quickly voted in favour of it. For each prohibited activity carries ethical considerations.

Why are we opposed to cloning? We are opposed to it because we think that in human development and psychogenesis, it is not desirable for a parent and a child to have exactly the same physical appearance and genetic makeup.

How could we meet our parental responsibilities? How could a child develop normally, in the healthiest manner, if at all the significant stages of his life he is the spitting image of his father or mother?

No one has studied these questions. But account must be taken of the fact that in human development and psychogenesis, this is not something that is desirable.

At the beginning of the year, and last year, the Bloc Quebecois moved a motion to split the bill. We could have voted on the 13 prohibited activities and there could have been provisions under the Criminal Code such that if someone engaged in one of the prohibited activities in a public or private laboratory, there would have been recourse.

Let us not forget that if we had learned in November or October that Clonaid—which has a subsidiary in Quebec or in Canada—had conducted experiments that resulted in successfully cloning a human being, we would not have had any legal recourse.

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, who is the member for Outremont, might not have liked it, but he would not have been able to do anything but make sorry excuses to Canadians because there is no provision in the Criminal Code to punish or lay criminal charges against anyone.

Thus the importance of this bill. Obviously there are colleagues in the House, who shall remain nameless, who would have made this a pro-life and pro-choice debate. I think this is ill-advised. This is not a pro-life and pro-choice debate; this is a debate about prohibited practices and specific regulations.

It is true that under the bill, the regulatory agency could obtain authorization allowing it to conduct research on embryos. Obviously if a woman were to give her informed consent and go to a fertility clinic or any other place that does artificial insemination and say, “If there are extra embryos in my ovulation cycle, I agree to let them be used in a carefully planned research project that has been approved by a research ethics committee”, then in this case it is true that research could be done.

We need to be able to do research on stem cells because there are major degenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's and cerebral palsy, and we must improve the human condition. There may be situations where current reproductive material or knowledge does not allow us to conduct new research without new studies on embryos.

It is true that the use of stem cells requires destroying embryos. Depending on one's definition of life, there may be some who, for religious reasons, or who, because of their convictions, claim that destroying a human embryo is homicide.

However, that is not the case under the law. The Supreme Court has ruled: an embryo is not a human being. A human being exists from the moment it is declared living and viable, outside of its mother's body and once it has taken its first breath. That is the law.

I believe that this is a balanced bill because it requires proof that there is no other way to conduct this research other than using embryos to provide stem cells.

My time has expired. I will have further opportunity to comment during this debate. We have concerns about the regulatory agency and I will comment on these concerns when the other groups of motions are being debated.

[Assisted Human Reproduction Act, February 11th, 2003]

Madam Speaker, may I just request that the Chair clearly indicate the motions being voted on, because there have been changes in their presentation.

We have voted on Motion No. 84. What is the number of the one that you are preparing to put to a vote?

[Supply, February 10th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, no one in the Bloc Quebecois, and that includes me, is claiming that Iraq did not commit any violations.

The issue is that, in the future, based on a full assessment of the situation, it is our hope that, if there is a military intervention, it will be conducted under the aegis of the UN. What distinguishes us from the official opposition is that we do not believe that the United States should engage in a military offensive without the approval of a second Security Council resolution.

Should there be a second resolution, we would like a vote to be held in the House, and this is what we are debating today.