Maurice Dumas

[Official Languages, April 3rd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, despite what the government says, the francophones in Kelowna will have no services in French until two years from now.

How does the government explain its failure to comply with its own Official Languages Act?

[Aboriginal Affairs, April 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the government of Quebec is announcing today its new aboriginal affairs policy.

In spite of their tough social and economic situation, aboriginals in Quebec are striving for self-government and self-sufficiency.

This new Quebec policy is more positive, open and beneficial to the aboriginals. It will provide them with greater recognition and the flexibility they need to develop as they have always wanted to.

The new policy brings the Government of Quebec closer to the aboriginal communities and setting up a process for a more harmonious relationship with the aboriginals of Quebec.

On the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Quebec aboriginal affairs secretariat, the Bloc Quebecois is proud to support this initiative undertaken by the Government of Quebec.

[Criminal Code, April 1st, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I am particularly pleased to speak today in connection with Bill C-247, because my hon. colleague for Drummond is its sponsor, and also because I am a member of the Standing Committee on Health.

Public awareness was suddenly aroused around the world when the news was released that an adult ewe had been cloned by a team in Scotland.

I would like to start with a definition of the word “clone”. The popular definition is that it is an organism, a person, an animal or a plant that is a completely identical or nearly identical copy of another organism in terms of appearance or function.

On the biological level, it refers to a population of organisms, cells or genetically identical DNA molecules resulting from the asexual reproduction of a single organism.

The concerns world-wide about cloning human beings are justified. First a brief historical overview is necessary.

The first government inquiry into the new reproductive technologies was the 1989 Baird Commission. Its mandate was “to look into current and foreseeable progress in science and medicine relating to reproductive techniques, their repercussions on health and research, their moral, social, economic and legal consequences, and their impact on the general public, and to recommend policies and protective measures to be adopted”.

The Baird Commission tabled its report only in November 1993. The main conclusions and recommendations were broadly similar to the foreign studies on this topic.

So the federal government announced in January 1996 the creation of an interim advisory committee with a mandate to put the moratorium into effect, to follow developments in new reproduction technologies and to advise the minister.

So, on June 14, 1996, the federal Minister of Health at the time, David Dingwall, introduced Bill C-47. There was no provision for the application of the Criminal Code.

The federal government's proposed second stage involved amending Bill C-47 to include a regulatory framework for all reproduction and manipulation technologies.

Despite its approval in principle of Bill C-47, the Bloc vigorously opposed the establishment of a new national agency and deplored the fact that the Criminal Code was not applied.

During the hearings of the Standing Committee on Health, witnesses expressed a number of reservations about the content of this bill.

Clearly, at this point in time, there is no justification for cloning human beings, regardless of the process used.

I should mention that one of the clauses in Bill C-47 prohibited human cloning. This clause is found in Bill C-247. It criminalizes human cloning, without prohibiting scientific research in genetics, which may be beneficial at several levels.

Clauses 2 and 3 of this bill also make liable to punishment anyone who deliberately offers to carry out or requests experiments in human cloning.

The Bloc has repeatedly called for government intervention to prevent practices related to new reproduction technologies.

The Bloc Quebecois called for criminalization of the sale of ova, embryos and foetal tissue. In May 1994, the then Minister of Justice stated that the bill was slated for introduction in the fall of 1994. The moratorium followed only in 1995, and Bill C-47, which merely makes the moratorium law, was introduced in June 1996.

It is clear that the use of these technologies challenges our values, because it involves the very definition of the foundations of our society, our descendants. Limits must be set, but what should those limits be? We see that the entire world is concerned by this problem.

In March 1997, the following comment by Dr. Joseph Ayoub appeared in La Presse “France has thus played a role by creating, in 1983, a national advisory committee on ethics in the life sciences and health. It advises on the ethical problems raised by the progress of knowledge in the fields of biology, medicine and health, and publishes recommendations on these topics”.

After 10 years of work, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe recently approved a draft agreement on human rights and biomedicine. The approved document allows research on in vitro embryos under two conditions: if it is in the interest of their development or if it is related to the diagnosis of serious diseases.

But any creation of embryos for research continues to be prohibited. Now, what remains to be done is to obtain an international consensus on the human genome and human rights from the UNESCO international bioethics committee.

The British parliamentary inquiry on science and technology called for international regulation of cloning, in order to prevent any deviation into eugenics.

As far back as March 1996, the Collège des médecins du Québec launched a commission to examine the practice of medicine in the year 2000. Its mandate was to examine the future prospects of medicine, the changes it will have to face, and the steps to be taken to deal with these new realities in relation to the major ethical issues of the day, which mainly affect the beginning and end of human life.

One of the commission's recommendations to the Collège des médecins was to ensure that human integrity and dignity takes precedence over technical progress. It also recommended that surveillance systems be put into place in order to avoid any deviations, and to create a standing committee on ethical issues.

Obviously, cloning raises a number of ethical and legal problems. Cloning does not seem to be a solution for ensuring the survival of our planet. Consequently, the Bloc Quebecois supports Bill C-247 introduced by the hon. member for Drummond.

[Commission On Future Of Mirabel Airport, March 27th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, we Bloc members from the Lower Laurentians, in conjunction with the hon. member for Beauport—Montmorency—Orléans, tabled a brief during one of the hearings held by the commission on the future of Mirabel airport.

The Bloc Quebecois cares about the survival of the airport and the social and economic development of the Laurentians. We have made several recommendations to the commission, including one asking the concerned authorities to finish building highway 13 as soon as possible in order to allow Mirabel to maintain the highest level of economic activity.

We have recommended that ADM, Aéroports de Montréal, try to attract companies to Mirabel and allow the use of the facilities at an attractive price. For Mirabel airport to achieve its full potential, it must diversify its economic operations and be given a multi-sectoral mandate.

We deplore the fact that the federal government is not on the Tardif commission, for it is responsible for the mess we are in.

[Old Age Security, March 24th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, members of AFEAS, the women's association for education and social action, signed and mailed over 35,000 cards to the Minister of Finance, asking him to make substantial changes to his proposed reform of old age security.

Does the Minister of Finance intend to follow up on the requests and recommendations made by AFEAS?

[The Environment, March 19th, 1998]

Madam Speaker, the Kanesatake Mohawk Council, the people of Kanesatake and the people of Oka, through their mayor, have expressed concerns about the serious consequences they could suffer because of an unregulated landfill located in Mohawk territory.

Will the minister admit that the best way to solve the problem would be to intervene so that Quebec's environmental laws and regulations apply there as they do everywhere else?

[Rwanda, March 13th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of International Co-operation.

In February, Father Curic, a missionary from Quebec, was savagely murdered in Rwanda. Father Curic worked with CIDA managing a program providing assistance in rebuilding this country so hard hit by genocide. The CIDA program was to end in 1998.

Would the minister tell us what measures have been taken following the assassination of Father Curic to ensure that the program he was managing will be completed?

[Tribute To Dora Wasserman, February 13th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, at the Soirée des Masques ceremony, the Académie québécoise du théâtre paid tribute to Dora Wasserman, the founder and director of the Yiddish theatre at the Saidye Bronfman arts centre.

The Bloc Quebecois would like to pay tribute to Ms. Wasserman's exceptional devotion. She has given her life to the theatre and to preserving the language and longstanding traditions of the rich Yiddish culture.

After training at the prestigious Jewish theatre in Moscow, she arrived in Montreal in 1950. For 60 years, the Yiddish theatre has performed on the stage of the Monument national, which used to belong to the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste. Keen to build bridges between cultures, Ms. Wasserman and her troupe presented a Yiddish version of Michel Tremblay's Les Belles-Soeurs in 1992.

Congratulations Dora Wasserman for making Quebec culture even richer.

[Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Fleur De Lys, February 2nd, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, January 21 marked the anniversary of the adoption by the Quebec Legislative Assembly of the Fleur de Lys as the official flag of Quebec.

In 1946, independent member René Chaloult tabled a motion in the Legislative Assembly calling for a flag “symbolizing the aspirations of the people of this province”. Finally, on January 20, 1948, at 3 p.m., as the Legislative Assembly met, Premier Maurice Duplessis announced that the Fleur de Lys now flew over the National Assembly.

Twenty years ago, René Lévesque made a statement on this matter which is as timely today as it was then: “As the settlers of New France, we had to become a specific and homogeneous people. As citizens of Quebec, all that remains for us to do, in order to imbue history with its full weight of reality and hope, is to become the true nation our flag already proclaims us to be”.

[Bill C-14, December 10th, 1997]

Mr. Speaker, at their latest national council, the members of the Parti Quebecois unanimously passed a motion introduced by the riding of Argenteuil, the Conseil régional des Laurentides and the Conseil exécutif national, which reads as follows:

“It is moved that the national council reiterate Quebec's full rights to administer a general policy on Quebec waters and condemn the latest federal infringement in an area of provincial jurisdiction with the introduction of Bill C-14.”

The people of Quebec will never agree to let the federal government appropriate this common wealth, which belongs to Quebec. It alone must have control and it intends to keep it.