OTTAWA - The federal government has taken a giant step toward controlling how Canadians can have children in the 21st century.
Draft laws presented yesterday by Allan Rock, the Minister of Health, would ban such activities as human cloning, the sale or purchase of human embryos and paying women to be surrogate mothers. Buying, swapping or bartering of human sperm or eggs would also be outlawed. Violators could be sent to prison for 10 years or face fines of up to $500,000.
"We want to make sure that reproductive technologies, which offer some women a better chance of having a child, are safe and that Canadians are able to make informed decisions about them," said Mr. Rock, the MP for Etobicoke Centre, who presented the draft laws to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health.
Mr. Rock asked the committee to give him a review of the legislation by January.
The draft legislation would allow women to act as surrogate mothers so long as they are not paid. Indeed, it even bans the payment of minor expenses such as parking fees for people donating sperm or eggs.
The draft bill also calls for the development of a registry to collect information on sperm, egg and embryo donations, so children conceived with donor material could learn about their own medical history.
In addition to reproductive practices, the legislation would also regulate scientific research, such as stem cell research, which has the potential to treat such illnesses as Parkinson's disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
Under the new laws, banned research practices would include the fusion of human and animal DNA to create hybrid creatures, the gender selection of children for non-medical purposes, and the creation of embryos for research purposes.
Experts in the field called the proposals "a breath of fresh air" after Bill C-47, a harshly criticized bill that died on the order paper when the election was called in 1997. "The tone is not so punitive, it is not so negative toward the infertile," said Dr. Arthur Leader, chief of reproductive medicine at the University of Ottawa.
However, others say Canada lags too far behind other industrialized countries in creating laws on human reproductive technology and research.
Britain created an independent authority to deal with such matters in 1991. In recent years, its authority has been expanded to include the licensing of cloning and stem cell research.
Critics say the proposals concentrate too much power over how Canadians may create offspring in the hands of the federal government.
"Given the fact that this involves licensing fertility clinics, the jurisdictional issue is quite clear that [this] is a provincial jurisdiction," said Maureen McTeer, a former member of the royal commission. "I think an independent organization, independent of a government department, would be a better way to proceed."
Canadian Alliance MP Preston Manning, a member of the health committee, agrees.
"I think the biggest deficiency in the bill is the lack of any regulatory body to administer or develop regulations," Mr. Manning said.
"I think one of the main missions of the committee will be to design a regulatory body that can deal with these issues, pass regulations and change them on a regular basis."
One infertile couple said the new laws will only cause them to seek a young woman to sell them an egg in the United States.
"This will only drive us over the border," said Wayne Shaw, a Burnaby, B.C., man whose wife cannot produce eggs after suffering ovarian cancer several years ago. "If Canada won't let us have a child, it won't stop us. The U.S. is still a free country."