Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege to rise and speak to this important legislation. Bill C-56 touches on matters of life and death and on the desires of parents to conceive children and to build families. It offers hope to thousands of Canadians who are looking for cures to diseases which they suffer each day.
The subjects addressed in the bill are ethically complex and highly controversial. I do not claim to have all the answers but the decisions we make today will have a profound effect on thousands of Canadians for generations to come.
The bill has the potential for great good but can also do enormous harm. While we do not have all the answers, we are still called upon to choose, but on what basis do we choose?
I want to state my belief that every Canadian, young and old, has been endowed with an intrinsic value by their creator. Human life is special and I am in favour of protecting and preserving human life at all stages, from conception to natural death.
Scientists largely agree with the technical moment of when life begins. All indications are that life begins at conception. For example, our personal DNA structures will remain unchanged from conception to death. There is no logical stopping point after conception where we can say that life begins.
There is overwhelming agreement on this question. The main disagreement in the bill will not lie between those who believe that embryos are human life and those who do not. Disagreement will come between those who believe that every embryo must be protected and those who believe that the medical benefits and scientific research outweigh its value. Our natural tendency will be to accuse one side of ignoring human suffering and the other side of devaluing human life.
However I am convinced that both groups have good intentions. I will not question people's motives in this debate. I appreciate the desire to protect life and to alleviate human suffering. I simply believe that there is a way to accomplish both. We can protect life and cure disease by investing in the proven and growing promises of adult stem cells.
For that reason, the official opposition is calling for a three year prohibition on embryonic stem cell research to postpone the question while we allow research on adult stem cells to mature to its full potential.
While I regret that the government has chosen to follow the uncharted path of embryonic stem cell research, a path that leads in a direction other than that of human health, I also am hopeful that the government, the research community and the minister will be sensitive to the legitimate concerns of members on both sides of the House.
I would remind the House that the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Genome Canada have already instituted a one year moratorium on funding of research on human embryos. A prohibition extended for another two years would dovetail nicely with the three year review already mandated in the bill.
Given the great moral sensitivity of the decision, I believe the government ought to allow the conscience of every individual member of parliament to be freely heard. This means that there should be a free vote on every stage of the bill.
As members know, the bill is a child of the royal commission on new reproductive technologies which reported back in 1993. It has been a long gestation, taking nine years instead of nine months. The draft legislation was submitted to the health committee just over a year ago and the committee presented its recommendations last December.
We are pleased that the government has finally tabled legislation. We want the bill to pass with appropriate amendments as quickly as possible. It must not die on the order paper. I call for a commitment from the minister and the government to pass the legislation prior to any prorogation of the House.
The opposition supports aspects of the bill. We support an agency to regulate the sector. We support the bill's prohibitions: the banning of human and therapeutic cloning; chimeras; animal-human hybrids; sex selection; germ-line alterations; buying and selling of human embryos and commercial surrogacy. We are also pleased that the government has used the strength of the criminal code to ensure that these are respected.
I wish to speak briefly about one of the most important prohibitions, human cloning. I do not need to convince any of my colleagues that human reproductive cloning represents a profound disregard for human dignity and individuality.
In all the months of committee hearings, involving over 100 witnesses, I cannot recall a single witness that spoke in favour of human reproductive cloning. Yet science fiction is quickly becoming science fact. Last summer a number of groups held press conferences declaring their intentions to clone humans. One group has a strong Canadian link. If it is experimenting in Canada today currently no law could stop it.
When speaking last May at the World Health Organization assembly in Geneva, the former minister of health declared Canada's support for the resolution condemning reproductive cloning. He called for an international convention to prevent human cloning.
We wholeheartedly support those expressions. That is why this legislation, properly amended, needs to be quickly passed.
I would also like to talk about the research cloning or so-called therapeutic cloning. While this bill bans the practice, I was troubled with the comments made in the media by the minister two weeks ago when she said that though the government was not considering therapeutic cloning “at this time” she would not rule it out in the future. “This area is changing so quickly. You can't box yourself in”, she said.
Members understand the slippery slope we are on. Sometimes we need to draw boundaries. The minister should have taken to mind the words of her predecessor who said to the committee “just because we can do something does not mean that we must, or even that we should”.
On the day that Bill C-56 was tabled in the House of Commons, a group of Canadian scientists and ethicists published an article in the Globe and Mail calling for therapeutic cloning. They resorted to euphemism in describing it, referring to it as nuclear transfer.
Let us not bet be fooled; reproductive and therapeutic cloning begin with the same process. Therapeutic cloning for research purposes represents the commodification and the objectification of human life.
Recently President Bush denounced all forms of human cloning. “Life is a creation, not a commodity,” he said. A cloned embryo for research purposes could end up being used for reproductive purposes. Research or therapeutic cloning should remain a prohibited activity.
We are also concerned about other prohibitions. We find in the bill that the prohibition on the creation of human embryos does not apply to instruction on assisted reproductive procedures. It seems to me absurd to closely regulate the creation of embryos for research but not for instruction.
The idea that embryos can be created and destroyed at will for teaching purposes and fertility clinics runs directly contrary to their intrinsic value. It even appears that no permission would be required from a donor in this case.
This clause also stands against the intent of the bill itself, which is to make the use of embryos a controlled activity.
We are also concerned about the subtle pressures fertility clinics may experience to create more embryos than are necessary to have some left over for research. A clause should be added that requires licensees to limit the creation of embryos to numbers necessary to complete the reproductive procedures intended by the donors.
Another loophole is hybrids. While the creation of hybrids is prohibited, they will be allowed if not for the purpose of reproduction. Hybrids kept in a petri dish are still partly human and partly animal and this matter concerns us.
If as the government asserts it merely wishes to protect those who must test the viability of human gametes in fertility clinics, then this very limited use ought to be specified.
The health committee also heard compelling testimony recommending great caution in the regulation of surrogacy. We support the banning of commercial surrogacy and we share the committee's concern that the reimbursement for so-called allowable expenses could be abused by inflating expenses. The committee took these concerns seriously, recommending limits on the expenses for which reimbursements would be made.
However we will be calling for tighter language in the reimbursement provisions to ensure that compensation for expenses does not become a de facto commercial transaction.
In relation to controlled activities, I first wish to address a recommendation made by the royal commission on reproductive technologies that did not make it into the bill. It relates to the provisions of fetal tissue for research.
Three years ago we read in the press about an active commercial trade of fetal tissue in the United States, where body parts were regularly bought and sold in a quasi-legal market which Canadians found this to be highly distasteful. We want to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen in Canada. We understand that research into fetal tissue has gone on since the 1930s in Canada and that there is legitimate research that needs to be done. However, in keeping with the dignity and respect due to the human body, we ought to ensure that fetal tissue does not become a commodity that is bought and sold as it is in the United States.
The royal commission found gaps in the provincial laws that touch this issue. The commission stated there was “a lack of uniformity across Canada in provisions governing commerce in human tissue and body parts”. Accordingly the royal commission made the recommendation “That the provisions of human fetal tissue for use in research, or for any purpose not related to the medical care of the women herself, be subject to compulsory licensing” by the federal agency.
We feel that it would be natural and appropriate for the use of fetal tissue to be added to the controlled activities to be regulated by the Assisted Human Reproductive Agency of Canada.
I turn now to the contentious subject of research on human embryos. I understand that the government has the power to push this legislation through and that it will support the principles of experimentation with human embryos.
We have called already for a three year hiatus on embryonic research in accordance with our minority report. It is also our intention to ask parliament to narrow the grounds for research on human embryos in keeping with the dignity and respect due to human life. In this regard the minister ignored a careful recommendation of the health committee.
The majority report of the health committee recommended that research on embryos not be permitted “unless the applicant clearly demonstrates that no other category of biological material could be used”. I would note that clause 40 in the new bill simply states that research on human embryos can take place if the new agency satisfies itself that it is necessary for the purpose of the proposed research.
This especially troubles us when we see that clause 32 allows vast power to be delegated to any single member of the board of the agency. One person could make that decision.
First, the opposition feels that the definition of the word “necessary” should be placed in law, not left to the discretion of the agency. As it is there are no clear criteria for defining the circumstances under which experiments on the human embryo will be allowed. At the very least the wording of the majority report of the health committee should be used, requiring the applicant to demonstrate that no other category of biological material can be used for the purpose of the proposed research.
Second, the opposition asks that the purpose of any research on human embryos be placed in this clause. The purpose of research on embryos must be clearly restricted to deriving medical therapies that will assist in healing the human body. Otherwise research might one day encompass such activities as testing the safety and efficacy of drugs or cosmetics. This does not treat the embryo with the respect and dignity the government claims to recognize.
Third, the bill specifies that the consent of just one donor to a human embryo is required in order to use it for an experiment. The bill leaves it to the regulations to define the word “donor”. The language is important and I would remind the House that there are two donors to every human embryo: a man and a woman. Both donors, or as I would prefer to call them, parents, should be required to give written consent for the use of a human embryo, not just one. Both parents should have the right to give or withhold consent for the use of a human embryo.
Bill C-56, which governs experiments, should not itself become yet another experiment of political correctness. In this respect I would like more information about the impact of the statutory declaration of the bill, stating that women are more affected than men by the application of reproductive technologies.
If the effect of this clause might be to grant special legal rights on the basis of gender concerning such issues as an exclusive right of permission over the disposition of embryos, I will oppose it.
Though embryonic stem cell research has garnered much interest by the press, the scientists, health organizations and politicians, there are a number of concerns with the practice that are often overlooked.
Stem cells derived from embryos implanted in recipients are foreign tissue and thus subject to immune rejection, possibly requiring years of costly anti-rejection drug therapy. In a recently published study, embryonic stem cells injected into rodents grew brain tumours in 20% of the cases. A researcher said “I don't think this will be a treatment in humans for quite some time”. In fact there have as yet been no successful therapeutic applications for embryonic stem cells. There have in fact been problems.
On the other hand, adult stem cell research holds great promise. Research, using adult stem cells, is making important breakthroughs. Adult stem cells are easily accessible. They are not subject to tissue rejection and they pose minimal ethical concerns. Adult stem cells are now being used to treat Parkinson's disease, Multiple Sclerosis and spinal injuries. We should focus our energies and our scarce resources on research that is making a difference now.
The standing committee said:
--in the past year, there have been tremendous gains in adult stem research in humans. We also heard that, after many years of embryo stem cell research with animal models, the results have not provided the expected advances. Therefore, we want to encourage research funding in the area of adult stem cells.
Unaccountably, in its own research guidelines, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research only had this to say about adult stem cell research: “Research using adult stem cells would also be eligible for funding under specific conditions”.
It appears that far from emphasizing research in adult stem cells, the CIHR is limiting research funding for them. This raises important questions, not only about the lack of attention the agency pays to the standing committee but about the wisdom of focusing on embryonic stem cell research. Such a preoccupation might actually hinder the work going on with adult stem cells.
Advances in the field of adult stem cell research are recent and numerous. Events are unfolding around the world at an incredible pace. Here are four examples of what has happened just in the last 60 days.
Last week, May 15, the Journal of Clinical Investigations published the findings of researchers at the University of Minnesota who discovered that adult bone marrow cells can differentiate into liver cells. This suggests that patients with genetic diseases of the liver may benefit from therapies derived from adult stem cells.
Canada is at the forefront of this research. The May 1 issue of the prestigious journal of the American Society of Hematology featured the findings of a Montreal based company which has developed a treatment called “photodynamic cell therapy”, using adult stem cells to help fight the body's natural rejection of bone marrow transplants from incompatible donors. It has been described as a “magic bullet” in the treatment of rejection.
On April 8 this same company announced that the adult neural stem cells taken from a patient's own central nervous system have been successfully used in treating Parkinson's disease patients, reducing the symptoms by more than 80% over a one year period without the use of medication.
On April 2 in Vancouver a team at the University of British Columbia announced that it had been able to supercharge adult blood stem cells with a gene that allowed them to rapidly reproduce. They were able to heal mice with depleted blood systems. Some day adult stem cells could replace bone marrow transplants in humans.
Who knows what will happen in the next 60 days? We need to reinforce these gains with more research funding for adult stem cell research and allow more time for its potential to be realized.
I want to address for a moment the patenting of human life. In January 2002 it came to light that the human genes were regularly patented by Canada's Canadian Intellectual Property Office, contrary to the understanding of the Standing Committee on Health. We place patents on things to protect a financial interest. Patenting parts of the human body makes the human body into a commodity with a commercial value, contrary to the intention of the bill.
Existing patents might not even be enforceable. Patents are placed on things that are new and useful and show inventive ingenuity. Genes are not new. They exist in every human cell. Patenting of genes implies greater costs to the health care system. If people were able to corner the commercial market on medical therapies involving human genes they would be able to charge whatever the market would bear.
The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, an independent body set up by EU policy makers, said the unmodified stem cell should not be patented. It said patenting may be considered a form of commercialization of the human body.
The Standing Committee on Health was absolutely clear. Its report stated:
Given the importance that the Committee attaches to the respect of human dignity and integrity, we urge that patents be denied in relation to human material...Therefore, the Committee recommends that: The Patent Act be amended to prohibit patenting of humans as well as any human materials.
The Patent Act should be modified in this act to ban patents on the human body.
I will address the issue of limitations on donors of sperm and ova. Under Bill C-56 there would be no limit to the number of donations a person could make. A donor could make multiple donations and have dozens or even hundreds of children directly related to him or her. This could cause relational chaos in society. It could also represent a health risk. A person may be unhealthy in ways we could not detect and pass along genetic defects to hundreds of others.
The Standing Committee on Health recommended limits on the number of donations from the same donor and the number of babies born through the same donor. The government has ignored this in Bill C-56. However it is too important to ignore. A clause must be added to the bill to mandate that the agency set such limits.
I will move to an important topic: the right of the child to know his or her heritage. The bill's preamble states that:
--the health and well-being of children born through the application of these technologies must be given priority in all decisions respecting their use--
We in our party agree, but apparently the government does not. Bill C-56 would give complete anonymity to donors of sperm and ova, leaving the children born as a result with no information about their parents. The bill should give priority to children who deserve to know their heritage. Although the agency created by Bill C-56 would retain all identifying information about the donors, the bill would not allow the agency to give it to children conceived using reproductive technologies.
Reproduction should take place within the context of human relationships, not divorced from them. Children have the right to know where they came from. That is why anonymous donors of sperm and ova should not be allowed. This principle of the bill is directly contrary to the recommendation of the Standing Committee on Health which states:
We believe that only donors who consent to have identifying information released to offspring should be accepted. We feel that, where there is a conflict between the privacy rights of a donor and the rights of a resulting child to know its heritage, the rights of the child should prevail...We want to end the current system of anonymous donation.
The textbook Bioethics in Canada states:
One's genetic history links one to a network of persons. Grandparents, great-grandparents, and the collateral relationships of uncles, aunts, cousins, are integral strands in the pattern of human connections essential to one's sense of personal identity. One may experience a very shallow sense of identity, if one's social identity rests upon no identifiable underlying grid or network of connections to one's genetic ancestors and relations.
We need to feel the pain of adopted children who want but are not allowed to discover their origins. Their pain would be multiplied thousands of times over if Bill C-56 passed unamended. We can easily prevent that from happening.
Today the criminal code calls children born of unmarried parents bastards. Even though children have nothing to do with their origins they can be marked for life for something their parents did. We may be stigmatizing an entirely new social class of people who have no known linkage. This would be cruel for children who are artificially conceived.
An identified donor is a responsible donor. If all donors were willing to identify, people would donate for the right reasons. Unfortunately, one important motivation for anonymous donations is money. One might think donors would stop giving if they could not be anonymous. However the experience of other countries and jurisdictions shows that there would still be donors if they had to be identified. A sperm bank in California found that half of all donors were willing to be identified. An earlier study in New Zealand found that nearly all donors were willing to meet with future offspring.
The government claims that the policy of anonymous donation is like adoption where parents who give up their children are able to remain anonymous. This is untrue. Donations of sperm and ova are intentional, with an opportunity to identify before the donation is made. The decision to put a child up for adoption is made after an unintentional pregnancy is already in progress. The two cases are entirely different.
New Zealand has a policy to accept only identified donations. Sweden made anonymous donations illegal in 1985. The state of Victoria in Australia has also made them illegal. Austria and the Netherlands are planning to implement such laws by the end of the year. Sperm and ova donors have plenty of time to consider their choice carefully before they go ahead. Bill C-56 is unacceptable in this regard.
I will comment on the structure of the Assisted Human Reproductive Agency of Canada. As we have heard in committee, for the agency to be effective it is essential that it gain the trust of the industry and all Canadians. The opposition will attempt to win trust for the agency by ensuring it is strong, independent and transparent.
I will address the agency's mandate. The Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies adopted as its central principle an ethic of care based on the first principle of medicine that one should do no harm. The commission said:
The concept...goes beyond simply avoiding actions that might cause harm, to taking steps to prevent harm and create conditions in which harm is less likely to occur--
The Minister of Health told the standing committee:
There must be a higher notion than science alone...that can guide scientific research and endeavour. Simply because we can do something does not mean that we should do it.
The standing committee recommended a careful approach when any assisted reproductive technique raises threats of harm to human health. The committee said:
--the interests of researchers and physicians are supported to the extent that they do not compromise the interests of the children and adults.
The opposition in its minority report added a wise principle:
--where there is a conflict between ethical acceptability and scientific possibility, the ethically acceptable course of action shall prevail.
The interests of people come before the interests of research. The ethic that one should do no harm should be part of the legislative mandate of the agency or be included in the statutory declaration at the beginning of the bill.
We have a number of structural concerns about the agency. It would not report not to parliament but only to the minister. It should be an independent agency. Unbelievably, clause 25 would allow the minister to give any policy direction he or she liked to the agency and the agency would have to follow it without question. The clause would also ensure such direction remained secret. If there were an independent agency answerable to parliament such political direction would be much more difficult.
The powers of delegation and inspection under the bill would be considerable. We want to take a careful look at them. Members of the board should have a fixed, twice renewable term of three years to ensure the minister cannot simply get rid of non-compliant board members or keep members forever. This was recommended in the report of the health committee.
The chair of the agency should be appointed for a five year rather than a three year period so that his or her appointment surpasses the electoral cycle. This would minimize political pressures on the agency. The performance of the agency should be evaluated by the auditor general rather than the agency itself, and the review should be made public. The licensing process of new fertility clinics should be transparent and public.
Bill C-56 would allow for the creation of advisory panels. We in our party believe key stakeholders should be given statutory standing. These include: users of and children born of assisted reproductive technologies; people with disabilities; scientific and medical communities; the faith communities and professional ethicists; private providers and research firms; taxpayers and their representatives; and provincial and territorial governments.
I will speak to the records that would be kept by the agency. I was surprised to find that no reporting would be required under the bill. At the very least an annual report to parliament must be mandated. The report should summarize the activities of the agency including the number and type of donors, the number of embryos created and destroyed, those who undergo assisted reproductive procedures and persons conceived as a result, and research projects undertaken including projects using human embryos.
A new clause in the bill should specify that all embryos produced and destroyed by licensees be mandated on the registry of the agency. In recognition of the respect and dignity due to the human body, no human embryo should be created or destroyed anonymously and forgotten. Each should be identified. For this purpose a naming convention should be used rather than a numbering system. It could use what I would call an embryonic name or a standard formulaic combination of both donors' names.
In private life I worked in animal husbandry. In the artificial insemination of cattle every sperm or ovum, let alone every embryo, carries both the number and the name along with a record of the genetic line of the sample. How could we do less for living human embryos? It would be unfortunate to allow the creation and destruction of anonymous human embryos. Recognizing them by name would help us to remember their origins and why they were created or destroyed. It would underscore their value.
We need to address the topic of federal-provincial relationships. As we know, reproductive technologies fall broadly under provincial jurisdiction. While the law allows provinces to name one observer to the board of the agency, the observer is not a voting member. The provinces should be able to name a non-government designate who automatically becomes a voting board member.
The government did not implement all the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Health regarding equivalency agreements with the provinces. Specifically the recommendations on parliamentary accountability, public consultation and information, and reporting requirements should become part of this session.
We have concerns about the equivalency agreement. A province might want to operate a more conservative program than the federal government. Under Bill C-56, for example, unless a province was willing to allow experimentation on human embryos no equivalency agreement could be possible. The federal government must not impose its views on the provinces in this regard.
The regulatory process envisioned in Bill C-56 is flawed. The regulations laid before parliament ought always to be referred to the Standing Committee on Health as the committee report recommends. Wording should be added requiring the minister to consider any report of the standing committee pursuant to the regulations laid before parliament. Regulations should not be made until the standing committee has reported on them, thus eliminating the 60 day limit placed on the standing committee to scrutinize legislation. Finally, a three year review process should be made a permanent feature of the act rather than a one time review.
We have other questions about the legislation and other amendments to make, which we will deal with in committee.
In closing, I want to address a significant omission in the preamble of the bill. The very first declaration of parliament is the protection and promotion of human health, safety, dignity and rights, and of course I am in accord with these objectives. However, there is one vital word missing. The purpose of the bill is to regulate technologies and assist Canadians to procreate. The protection and promotion of human life is an overarching concern of the bill. The missing word is “life”.
Human life is cheap in many countries of the world. I want Canada to be different. The preamble of the bill must reflect its overarching purpose. I would therefore request that the government include the protection and promotion of human life in its statutory declaration. I look forward to the input of my colleagues on both sides of the House, I look forward to the amendments and I look forward to all members voting freely on this issue.
