HEAL Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA SANTÉ

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, September 25, 2001

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[English]

The Chair (Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.)): I'd like to call this meeting to order.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As you can see from your agenda, we have guests who are going to address our topic.

I should also alert you to the fact that the motion that was on the agenda for last Thursday will be dealt with at about 12:30. Mr. Merrifield prefers to have it dealt with today rather than tomorrow, and he has a right to ask for that because of the 48-hour rule.

With that in mind, I'd like to introduce to you our four witnesses: Sherry Levitan, Joanne Wright, Phyllis Creighton, and Juliet Guichon. I would ask Ms. Levitan to begin.

Ms. Sherry Levitan (Lawyer, Canadian Multi-disciplinary Assisted Reproduction Coalition): I would like to begin by briefly describing CMARC and its principles. CMARC, the Canadian Multi-disciplinary Assisted Reproduction Coalition, is a multidisciplinary group of infertility patients—that is, the consumers—and professionals who work in the field of reproductive technology on a daily basis.

I am a solicitor practising in Toronto, and I have been involved in the field of third party reproductive technology since 1992. I typically represent the couples who are the intended parents.

CMARC was formed because we felt that those who use the technology were not being represented in any forum and had not been consulted by any group that purports to represent the infertile population. The founding members of CMARC are representatives of patients, lawyers, physicians, nurses, infertility clinics, surrogates, and mental health professionals who work in the field of reproductive technology on a daily basis. We can report to you on the reality, what is really going on and how it is going on.

We have the following principle: patients should be able to avail themselves of the technology currently available in an informed and safe manner. As a society we believe in the value of the family, and surrogacy is beneficial as a tool that enables those who would otherwise be unable to have their own genetic children to build their families.

Surrogacy should be regulated but not prohibited. We welcome regulation of the practice of reproductive technology. If policies and practices are put into place that protect and value all involved parties, we can safely enable the creation of families for those few couples—and I stress “few” couples—who can build a family only with the help of a third party. We believe that any woman may choose to act as a surrogate and that the service these women offer is honourable and admirable and is not a compromise of societal values.

Just as a note of clarification, there are two types of surrogacy: traditional and gestational. Traditional is what we think of when we think of the Baby M case, where a woman is inseminated and agrees to give up that child. We don't do that kind of surrogacy. It is not done in Canada. All of my comments are restricted to gestational surrogacy, where a woman carries a child that is unrelated to her.

Next I would like to describe from first-hand experience the people who are using the technology and the surrogates themselves. Achieving a pregnancy by working with a carrier is the court of last resort and represents the only option to couples where the female partner has had surgical removal of her uterus, was born without a uterus, or has had recurrent miscarriages or whose health would be adversely affected by a pregnancy as a result of another unrelated medical condition, usually an auto-immune disease, such as lupus or Crohn's. Diabetes is also a common cause.

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Each one of my clients has endured a catastrophe. A few have had cancer of the uterus, which resulted in hysterectomies but cruelly left their ovaries intact. Several had emergency hysterectomies after delivering their first children. One 25-year-old client—think of it, a 25-year-old client—lost her uterus and almost lost her life when her first pregnancy suddenly terminated at 20 weeks of gestation.

One client, I'll call her “H”, after 17 years of infertility is expecting her first child. And whenever I call her and I say “How are you?”, she always says the same thing: “Over the moon, Sherry. Over the moon.”

Each one has a story that could melt your heart, and each one values and treasures the help they get from the women who have chosen to be carriers.

I would like to dispel some myths as well. Some people believe that women will choose to work with surrogates because they want to avoid a pregnancy or varicose veins or weight gain. Speaking from my own experience, I have never been consulted by a couple who had any other choices. And I have never met a woman who wanted to work with a surrogate unless she could not carry a pregnancy. My clients come from all walks of life and live all across this country. They are not wealthy people.

I will touch briefly on who the carriers are, because Joanne Wright is here and she will speak a little bit more about it.

CMARC would recommend that only women who are over the age of 19 and who have had a previous pregnancy be allowed to act as carriers. No woman who has had a prior criminal conviction or whose spouse has had a prior criminal conviction, or who has had any personal experience with domestic violence, or who is on social assistance should be eligible to be a carrier.

As a note of interest, if the carriers are married their husbands are very much involved in the process. They go to counselling as well and they are signatories to the contract. We recommend that this continue to be the case.

The vast majority of carriers are lovely, caring women who are very grateful for their own families and want to help someone else build their own family. The overwhelming motivation is to help someone. Every now and then a woman surfaces who is acting as a carrier for all the wrong reasons, and the media seem to revel in reporting her sensational story. Please know that they are the exceptions and not the rule.

The draft legislation would permit altruistic surrogacy. We recommend that reasonable compensation as well be allowed. Compensation is meant to compensate the carrier for her time, effort, and the inconvenience of the pregnancy.

Years ago, in a California case, the court was struggling to characterize the role of the gestational carrier and ended up by comparing her to a foster mother. She was charged with the care and nurture of the child for a limited period of time. She was not considered a parent. She was not accepting moneys in exchange for terminating any parental rights because she never had any parental rights. The fee paid to her was in recognition of the time she spent in caring for the child.

We believe that compensation should not be so high as to act as an incentive. We recommend that the minimum amount paid to a carrier be tied to the employment insurance rate offered by the federal government and that the maximum amount be set at $2,500 per month. In addition to those amounts, a carrier is reimbursed for her out-of-pocket expenses. A sample list of the types of expenses has been attached to my brief for your interest. And out-of-pocket expenses should be capped at $5,000.

Surrogacy, if permitted, must be done cautiously, and there are several prerequisites to a cautious approach. Any woman who wishes to act as a carrier should have access to all relevant information—that includes medical, procedural, everything that is possible—and she must be able to provide informed consent. Access to legal counsel and psychological counselling are vital components of informed consent.

Currently, as it stands, all parties are represented by their own counsel and a preconception agreement is entered into. So there is a contract before any embryo transfer. The contract is long and detailed and is meant to allow the parties to reach an agreement on all foreseen issues before a pregnancy is initiated. This agreement should be mandatory. I would be pleased to provide you with a sample contract if you would have an interest. It is long; it is 30 pages, but it does deal with many different issues.

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Medical and psychological screening of all parties, but especially the carriers, is vital and is a necessary step. Professional help is required in arranging the right type of screening and in evaluating the results. Currently Canadian couples do not have the resources required to find an appropriate carrier, arrange for medical and psychological screening, and provide her with the required information. As a result, more and more Canadian couples are turning to the Internet, with disastrous results. We need to provide them with the structure and the framework to help them do this properly. Agencies that would provide all or some of these services to Canadian couples should be allowed to continue and provide the ongoing support necessary.

If surrogacy is banned, we see two clear consequences. One is that surrogacy will become an option only for the wealthy, and they will go to the United States. The other is that people who are motivated—and believe me, these people are—will go underground.

As it stands, surrogacy is currently an arrangement entered into between capable and competent adults who have had the benefit of legal counsel and psychological counselling. Every effort is made to protect the dignity of all parties and to foster a strong, cooperative relationship among the parties. I think it's important to stress that. This is not an adversarial process. We build a team, and that team goes the distance. We are unaware of any case in Canada where a gestational carrier chose not to provide the intended parents with custody or where any contractual disputes arose.

Canadians are performing surrogacy in a careful, cautious, and caring manner, and the professionals involved are acting cooperatively. We are very proud of the way it is being done.

If criminal sanctions are imposed for anyone who engages in any of the activities currently considered to be banned practices, we believe the following consequences will occur. One, the wealthy will go to the United States. It is prohibitively expensive to do that, and surrogacy will be restricted to the very wealthy. Motivation runs extremely high—I cannot begin to express to you how high—for people who can only have their biological children with the help of a gestational carrier. We believe these people will find a way to continue even if this is banned.

How can we provide patients with the best advice or adequately protect their respective interests if covert agreements are entered into? The potential for abuse is vast, and we as a society will not be able to protect the individuals involved. We have seen this to some extent in traditional surrogacy.

Now, I told you that we don't do traditional surrogacy. No physician that I know will perform an insemination where he knows that it's a traditional surrogacy. No lawyer that I know will draft an agreement. Yet it's going on, because people have turned to self-help. I strongly urge this committee to avoid a situation where that would occur in the realm of surrogacy. Self-help would be disastrous.

Our friends in academic circles can pontificate about values and morals and ask whether or not this should be done in Canada. The reality is that it is being done, and it will continue to be done regardless of whether or not the federal government legislates a ban on surrogacy. We need to recognize that reality and provide a regulated environment that will protect Canadians.

In summary, as the Supreme Court of Canada has already declared, Canadian women are autonomous over the use of their bodies and can choose whether or not they wish to carry a child for someone who cannot. Surrogacy exists and will continue to exist. With the use of proper screening, access to legal advice, and counselling, the federal government can protect Canadians from exploitation while encouraging the building of the strongest and most basic element of our society, the family.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Levitan.

We'll carry on with Ms. Wright, please.

Ms. Joanne Wright (Canadian Multi-disciplinary Assisted Reproduction Coalition): Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for inviting me here today to hopefully give you some insight and dispel some myths about the world of surrogacy.

My name is Joanne Wright, and I've been happily married for over twenty years. I'm also the mom of three hormonal teenagers. I've had the privilege to help two couples become families by being their surrogate. But let's start at the beginning.

Having completed our family, and knowing the joy that children can bring, it seemed so sad that many couples, through no fault of their own, were unable to experience this fulfilment. Technology has come a long way to assist the infertile and permit couples to now have a biological child through a third party.

Even before we had children, I had heard the word “surrogate” and filed it away in my mind for future reference. During my pregnancy with our third child, I watched a documentary on surrogate mothers and knew I could do this. In researching this, I found my only option at that time was to travel to the United States and meet with a surrogate attorney, named Noel Keane, in Dearborn, Michigan. It was through this reputable agency I was able to receive the counselling and direction I needed to accomplish my goal. Their professionalism and credibility were second to none.

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This agency also introduced me to my couple. I was going to be a gestational surrogate. We used embryos created from the eggs from the intended mother and sperm from the intended father. We did the IVF procedure and embryo transfer in March of 1988. In December of 1988 their son and daughter were born.

I had such a wonderful sense of accomplishment and pride. I never at any time felt these babies were any part of me. They belonged to their parents, end of story. I did feel blue when it was all over, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I didn't really plan on doing this a second time, but a friend who knew a couple who were searching for a surrogate approached me. Was I interested? No, thank you. Would I just speak with them? Of course.

So once I met with them and heard their story of how desperately they wanted a child but couldn't carry a child, how could I deprive them of this? The procedure was done in May of 1991, and their baby boy was born in February of 1992. I had incredibly different feelings. We had a wonderful birth and a very supportive hospital staff, but I still had the feeling that my best friend had just had a new baby. I had no attachment feelings. I was just the babysitter. I never for a second thought about keeping their baby.

Nor was this about the money. During my first surrogacy I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as compensation. I seldom hear many public complaints about the fees of the clinics, attorneys, counsellors, pharmaceutical companies, etc., as I do about the surrogate fee, and this is usually only from the people who have nothing to do with any of these procedures. A surrogate sacrifices her emotions, her hormones, her body, her intimacy with her husband, and her active lifestyle with her children. She has the potential risks of losing her reproductive organs, other gestational and delivery complications, possible transfusions, and, yes, perhaps even her life to help a couple achieve their dream.

Let's break down the compensation and say on average the surrogate is probably receiving about $2.50 an hour. Since 1992 I've worked for years on numerous committees with well-respected lawyers, doctors, social workers, and clinic staff, all trying to put some reform and regulation into surrogacy. We did all discover, quite surprisingly, that many people, both potential surrogates and intended parents, were getting lost in the shuffle and getting the runaround, basically just for lack of information. We decided that someone should be available to take their calls and hopefully match up couples with surrogates. I volunteered to be the contact person for all of these people and to streamline the communication process by a third party not involved in the medical care. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I'm also the director of Canadian Surrogacy Options Incorporated. My passion has always been about surrogacy. This is why I took my passion a step further to create this liaison service, not only for couples but also for women contemplating surrogacy, hopefully to educate and inform people that surrogacy is truly a viable option for couples wanting to have a biological child. Surrogacy is the next logical step.

I would like to reassure the committee members that this truly isn't how people anticipated having children when they were first married. Unfortunately for many, medical circumstances have made this the end of the road. When couples approach me they have exhausted all medical intervention. By legislating and regulating agencies in Canada, we can give these couples new hope.

By having an agency such as mine available, people would know that the government is listening. By licensing it, they can be assured that there are professional, responsible people with experience dealing with the most personal issues who can be compassionate as a teacher, guide, and advocate, and be a stable force in creating a balance in supporting both the surrogate mother and the intended parents on this emotional journey.

By visiting a number of agencies in the States, I decided I needed to make mine a little bit more user-friendly. I've always been committed to guiding everyone involved through their journey with as few bumps in the road as possible. I absolutely love what I've been doing over the last number of years. It has been a bit daunting at times, but certainly challenging and very rewarding.

Unfortunately, there probably isn't a story I haven't heard. It still breaks my heart every time I do hear someone's personal struggle with infertility. For example, there's the young woman who at 13 had cancer and had to have a hysterectomy. Can you image knowing at 13 that you will never give birth? Surrogacy is her only hope. Or there's the young woman of 18 who had advanced cancer and also had to have a hysterectomy. Because she was already pregnant they first had to perform a termination. Ten years later, married to a wonderful man, surrogacy was her only hope. Their surrogate is currently pregnant with twins and due in December.

The stories, ladies and gentlemen, are endless, as is the pain in their voices when they talk about it. Not for one second would I think that a woman wouldn't want to be pregnant herself and give birth, and yet there are some skeptics who think these women just don't want to get fat. The women I deal with would give anything to be able to do that.

We have yet to have a surrogate mother change her mind. No surrogate going through my service has ever been exploited or forced into this. The prospective surrogates have to be self-supporting and not on welfare. The couple has to have a true medical reason for going through surrogacy.

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As you can see, there are a lot of issues that not only a professional would be able to foresee, as well as insisting upon legal contracts and counselling for all involved. Surrogate parenting is a wonderful family construction option for many families. It can be a joyous experience for both the family and the gestational carrier. I hope I have helped people along the way with my personal experience and a common sense approach to making a couple a family.

In closing, I hope I have put a positive spin on surrogacy for you. I would hope that the honourable members would take some time to review what I and my colleagues have presented and that rather than banning surrogacy entirely, we could remember the people who this would affect the most and ultimately regulate this practice, including limits on compensation, number of embryos transferred, etc., as well as legislating reputable agencies, which would in effect be enforcing these regulations with criteria such as medical, psychological, and legal advice.

I am certainly not the exception, but rather the rule in making a good end to this story. Thank you for your time.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Wright.

Ms. Guichon please.

[Translation]

Ms. Juliet Guichon (Professor of Bioethics, University of Calgary): Good morning. My name is Juliet Guichon and I am from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary.

[English]

I would like to respond to some of the issues my colleagues have raised, but I'll start first by expressing my concern as an academic, as somebody who has studied this issue in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, where I wrote a dissertation on the subject, and now I have a doctorate.

I have a number of reservations about the practice. Ms. Levitan and Ms. Wright make the point that this practice builds families, and I'm sure it does. But what happens is that we frame the issue, we look at the family that's been created, and the camera has moved from the family from which the child has come. To a certain extent, I think it's fair to say that a family has been ruptured.

Second, to call the woman who gestates a child a carrier is to privilege the male notion of parenthood: men give genetics, women give genetics and gestation. To say that genetics are more important than gestation is a political point of view. To reduce a woman, a birth mother, a woman who is pregnant, nurturing the child, whose body delivers in pain and is in a position to continue to nourish the child through lactation, to the word “carrier” I think does maternity a disservice.

Ms. Levitan referred to the case of Anna Johnson in California, where the California Supreme Court ruled that the woman who was gestating an embryo that was genetically unrelated to her was like a foster mother. That case is alone in the common-law world. No other jurisdiction I know of has found in the same direction. And it's important to point out that Anna Johnson was a woman of colour. She had mixed blood, African-American, some native Indian. She had had two stillbirths, two miscarriages, and she was pregnant with a live child and wanted to keep it. The court ruled that she couldn't, that it was to go to the people whose gametes had originated the pregnancy.

Ms. Levitan makes a point about informed consent. She says, rightly, that it's important people know what they're getting into. But there's an old song that says you don't know what you've lost till it's gone. The question is, how can somebody, even somebody who has actually gestated a child, know what it's like to surrender it? Also, informed consent allows people right up to the point of an operation, before they're anaesthetized, to refuse treatment. So arguably, a woman should be in a position at any point, if informed consent is the way we're going about it, to say no, I want to back out of this.

It's important to recognize that these are not contracts, even though they're styled as such by Ms. Levitan. There's no common-law province in Canada I know of that would regard these deals as contracts. They wouldn't see them as in the commercial world. It's family law, and as you know, because a marriage can end in divorce, all agreements about children are subject to the best interests of the child. Any deal is open to review in family law. In commercial law when you're talking about building a building or selling real estate, a deal is a deal. To put this practice in the commercial world would be a mistake. It's a practice of human procreation, and it belongs under the jurisdiction of family law, which has experience with extramarital pregnancies and births.

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Another point Ms. Wright made refers to Noel Keane's practice. I'm surprised she calls it reputable. He practised in Dearborn, Michigan. The Michigan legislature was so appalled by what was going on that they banned the practice in Michigan. That drove him out of state, so he had satellite firms for a while. He died at 57 of skin cancer, but before he died, he was sued by a birth mother—some people would call her a surrogate mother—who had gestated a child and surrendered it to a man who received the child. He was a single man with no parenting experience, and before the child was five weeks old, the child was dead. The woman who had given birth said if she had known this child was not going to a woman who would care for the child, she wouldn't have done it. That's just one instance, but there are a number with regard to Noel Keane. I have serious reservations about the practice.

When I received this draft, I was under the impression that you had already decided you were going to allow it to take place. Maybe I was under a misapprehension. So I've drafted these comments on the assumption that you were going to go ahead and make it possible for licensed facilities to take part in the process. With that in mind, I would caution you about that. But if that's what you're deciding to do, let me suggest the following.

The Chair: Excuse me, Madam Guichon. Perhaps I may interject. It's a piece of draft legislation that you have been reading. It is just a set of suggestions that we are being asked to comment to the minister on. No decision has been taken by anybody on this.

Ms. Juliet Guichon: Thank you.

So when you make your decision, let me suggest the following. I would caution you about allowing women to carry on with this procedure at a rate—I quickly did the math—of $2,500 a month multiplied by nine months, $22,500, plus $5,000, a total of $27,500. You might be permitting by the back door what you're preventing at the front door. But if you decide you're going to allow this practice to take place in licensed facilities, I suggest you regard it as an experiment. I know “experiment” could have pejorative connotations, and I don't mean that. Surrogacy has unknown social consequences. There are very few data thus far as to the practice, and that has to do with the fact that it has a quasi-criminal or illegal status, so it's very difficult for academics like myself to get data. So if you're going to allow it to take place, could you consider allowing it to take place in licensed facilities as research, so that people who engage in it will know that their outcomes are going to be studied?

If you do that, clause 21 of the draft has to be reworked, because that would prevent researchers from getting identifying information. We wouldn't know who the people are, we wouldn't be able to follow up. One of the concerns is that the family where the child is being gestated is obviously affected by this. If the camera shifts from the pregnant woman to the family that gets the child, nobody is looking any more at how they're faring. My research has been able to look only at anecdotal comments of children whose mothers were pregnant, whereafter the baby was transferred from their home. Those children, to go by the anecdotes—and we don't know whether this is typical or representative—seem to suffer. They see that their mother is losing a child. Proponents of the practice say you can counsel children, you can explain it to them, but at the end of the day, a baby is born to their family and the baby is transferred. The argument is raised as to whether these children will themselves be rendered insecure by the practice and what the outcomes will be for them as they reach puberty and deal with their own sexuality.

So I propose that if you are going to permit the practice to take place in licensed facilities, you do so as research, because never before in human history have we separated genetics and gestation in women, never before have we been able to say we don't know who the mother is. We see a pregnant woman and we say, well, she might be the mother, but just a minute, we've got to do some sophisticated DNA tests. This has important social consequences, because the certainty of maternity is the bedrock of human life. It has never been open to question. Paternal uncertainty leads to grief. Uncertainty is a problem in paternity, and I don't know that it would be beneficial to society if we could say that maternity also is open to question.

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The draft proposal would make it criminally illegal for brokers or intermediaries and commissioners engaged in the practice to offer money to pay money or to advertise. I propose that you also make it criminally illegal for women to offer to gestate a child.

I say that because if you go onto the World Wide Web, you'll see a number of women offering their services. I come from Calgary, which has a big cattle industry. You can see, if you go onto the web, there's the same type of information if you're interested in purchasing the semen of a bull. You'll see the progeny, the height, the weight, and so on. If you put those two pieces of information together, they're not very much different.

Couples will get together because of the advertisement of the woman. If you allow expenses—and the maximum that Ms. Levitan proposes is $27,500—then the couples will get together. So I propose that if.... Accepting their point that women 18 years of age and over are in a position to make decisions for themselves, I don't know why you would consider excluding them from criminal responsibility if you decide that this practice ought not to take place with payment.

Just as a drafting point, the definition of surrogate mother and the practice of surrogate mother would capture the ordinary practice of adoption. When I read the definition of surrogate mother and donor together, it seems that it would capture the practice of adoption. I don't know that this is a bad thing. It's my view that all practices of procreation should be legislated by family law. So I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but I just point it out.

As our representatives in the federal government, you are limited by the legislation you have under the Canada Act, which is criminal law, but a lot of the work has to be done by the provinces to make it clear what the law is on the subject. I recommend that you work together with the provinces to unify legislation. Only Quebec has passed legislation on this subject. Quebec has legislated that agreements for the transfer of custody of children are not contracts and may not be regarded as such, not enforceable by law.

I propose that the nine common law provinces be encouraged by you to unify that across the country so that one could never say these are contracts. One could say they're agreements about children but they're not contracts, and they're always subject to the test the court always applies—that is, what is in the child's best interest.

I propose also that you regard the mother of the child as the birth mother. This is in the child's best interest. The woman who contributes an ovum is contributing a single cell, and she stands in the same relation to the child as a father does. She contributes a single cell and stands back and waits for nine months. She may not be present at the birth because she couldn't get there geographically, or she may be dead.

The woman who is giving birth is in the room. When the child is born she's instinctively ready to continue to nourish the child. We know who she is. We can see her with our own eyes. We don't need a technologist to tell us who the mother is. Children need caregivers who are responsible for them, because they're vulnerable human beings. We need, as a society, identifiable responsible parties who can make medical decisions in the best interests of children. So I propose that you encourage the provinces to state emphatically that the birth mother is the mother of the child.

Now, that wouldn't prevent birth mothers from surrendering their children in adoption, subject to the home study tests and so on that legislators have already constructed. Legal paternity should be decided in the same manner as it is in other births.

As you may know, sometimes courts won't order a blood test. Let's say a woman is pregnant and the neighbour says “That's my child she's carrying, and when the child's born I want a DNA test.” If the woman is married and says she doesn't want to take a blood test and won't authorize it for her child, the courts sometimes say no, they won't do it. They don't want to disrupt the marital relationship.

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That's a judgment call. I'm not arguing that the judges always get it right, but there is a lot of case law on the subject. If a birth mother wants to keep her child and is refusing a blood test, it's not always the case that it'll be ordered.

In any event, legal paternity is something with which the law has a tremendous amount of experience. I argue that in this practice, legal paternity should be decided in the same way as it is in other births.

In the event of a custody dispute, I think the statute should state that there should be a presumption in favour of the birth mother as the best caregiver of a newborn, and for obvious reasons. She's usually lactating and will breast-feed the child. She is instinctively able to care for the child.

Family law rules regarding access and maintenance should apply. If the court decides to order a blood test and the sperm provider is determined to be the legal father, then he should be allowed to have his ordinary rights of access and the duty to provide financial support.

Licensed facilities should use in their consent forms language that makes clear these facts, that agreements are not enforceable as contracts and that the mother is subject to adoption law. Ontario, for example, will not even let her sign an agreement to surrender a child until seven days after the birth, and for 21 days after that period she may revoke the consent so that she would be entitled to the rights that other birth mothers are accorded. As well, it should be clear that the birth mother is the legal mother and that legal paternity is determined as it is in other births. Family law rules regarding custody, access, and maintenance of children should be applied.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Guichon.

Now we'll move to Ms. Creighton.

[Translation]

Ms. Phyllis Creighton (Member, Health Canada Advisory Committee on the Interim Moratorium on Reproductive Technologies): I greatly appreciate this invitation to participate in the discussion, which is very profound and serious.

[English]

I am very happy to be here before you. I want to establish a couple of facts to begin with. I am academically trained but my training is as a historian. My concern in this issue derives from many years. I was part of the natural childbirth movement with women who claimed ownership of their pregnancies, who wanted to celebrate this, who wanted to participate in it.

I come from a broken home, which was unusual for the time I grew up in, and I understand very well that children's voices are usually not heard. There is no one here to speak for the child, and I will take that role.

I care deeply about our being contextual, taking as wide a framework as possible. A book that a group of us put together for the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, Whose child is this?, still contains some profound thoughts. It's still worth reading. It's still available. It comes from the Anglican Book Centre and it was the Anglican Church of Canada's contribution to the royal commission.

As time goes by, I notice that some of the reflections are even more profound than they were when we first wrote them. For instance, this statement was made by my colleague in theology:

...when we recognize and acknowledge capitalism's inexhaustible drive to expand and create new markets, then the commodification of the human being

—that is, turning a child into an object of exchange for money—

is perfectly, but tragically, logical and inevitable. Human beings as the objects of their own production consume themselves in the market, which becomes the main arena of human action.

I do understand that my colleagues to the right are performing services that the Government of Canada invited a moratorium on in 1995. They did so because they wanted time for us to figure out where we were going. I had the honour to serve on the committee on the interim moratorium that was declared, and they have ignored that.

This leads me to think that when you're examining this question you need to look not just at Canada but at what is going on in the world. It is simply not the case that the use of a gestational carrier, which is a terrible term for a woman who spends nine months carrying a baby, is now being done by actresses and busy career women in the United Kingdom, where of course the story always was “This is simply to help women”.

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It is also not the case that the practice is widespread. It is my understanding that fewer than ten obstetricians in this country are engaged in this practice. As I read my brief you will find out what the stance of the profession on this is. The stories I have heard from people in the profession and very well placed to know would suggest to me that there are many situations in which counselling would be to no avail. You can help a woman understand that she doesn't really want to have a baby, but within the dynamics of a family, if it's her sister begging her, you'll ask her whether she's going to say no, and she'll say she can't.

There's also the situation that my colleague Dr. Jeff Nisker, who teaches medical ethics at the University of Western Ontario, put into a play last year, A Child on Her Mind. In it the story is a true one. There's a Kosovo refugee. Her employer wants a traditional surrogacy—it isn't true that it isn't done in Canada, because this one was. The woman was told, if you don't do this for us, we'll see that you get sent back. She came from a war-torn country, her boyfriend had died, she was in an impossible situation. She felt that the insertion of the syringe—the play shows you this—was a violation of her body and her person. As the pregnancy went on—she was a method actor, and I actually talked with her—she found that she identified with this baby. I asked her whether, if it was just another woman's egg and her sperm, it would make any difference to her. She spent quite a while thinking about it. She said, no, because it's the nine months experience.

Right after I had been at that play, I went to a gathering and met a nurse in her thirties who had been asked exactly to do this for her dearest friends. She had wanted to do it. They were anguished, and she had really wanted to do it. But when she looked at her own heart and what she knew would happen, she said she had to tell them, “I wish you did have a child, I wish I could do it, but I know, as the nine months went on, that would be my child”.

These are anecdotes, but it's also significant that there is some research evidence of problems. Juliet pointed out that you have to look a long time afterwards to be sure what you're doing. So a decade later there are researchers who are finding former surrogate mothers who now feel abandoned, betrayed, and in conflict about what they did.

Now I will turn to my prepared speech.

First, I urge you to recommend that the legislation on assisted human reproduction to be put forward prohibit commercial surrogacy, as the draft bill does, and also give no support or encouragement to non-commercial surrogacy. I support the provisions against payment, offer to pay, and advertisement in subclauses 4(1), (2) and (3). This would mean that you wouldn't have this kind of flyer. With respect, my colleagues here have a monetary conflict of interest. They earn money by doing this. I respect their integrity, I have listened very carefully to their stories, but this kind of thing would not be allowed if you so proceed. Canada should learn from U.S. experience, with its unsavoury catalogues of surrogates and Internet marketing.

Sound public policy must be based on the principle of the best interests of children. Baby-brokers are not in the best interest of children. Commercial surrogacy is vitiated by its morally unacceptable premise that a baby is a product to be exchanged and transferred for money. Brokers may claim that payment is for the reproductive service that the surrogate mother renders, but since she's not paid the full sum agreed to in the pre-conception arrangements until the baby is received into the custody of the commissioning parents, it is the baby who is being paid for. A child is not an object owned by its mother. The woman who gives birth to a baby, whether it came from her egg or another's, is its mother biologically—it won't be born if she doesn't give it birth—and legally under common law. She has duties of care towards that baby. To treat it as her saleable possession violates its right as a human being to dignity and respect.

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The very conception of a baby under the terms of surrogacy is morally unacceptable. The intent not to care for it and to give it up is the basis for the very decision to conceive it. Commercial surrogacy also treats women's reproductive capacities as a commodity, a demeaning attitude that promotes an improper role for women as breeders.

Second, I urge you to remove the support and encouragement to non-commercial surrogacy now in the draft legislation. Subclause 4(4) exempts from the previously stated prohibitions of payment in connection with surrogacy “the provision of legal services, medical services or psychological counselling services”. Paragraph 10(d) adds:

No person shall, except under the authority of a licence issued under subsection 12(1)...reimburse a surrogate mother for any expenses incurred by her in relation to her pregnancy.

Surrogacy thus is to be among the controlled activities that a licence would permit an agency or a person to engage in, and the proposed exceptions would encourage it by providing for a service structure to non-commercial surrogates and for reimbursement for their expenses.

The prohibition of consideration would close the front door to commercial surrogacy, but the allowance of expenses—a weasel word—can let it in the back door. What could a lawyer claim for the surrogate as expenses? Maintenance? Loss of salary? The sum adds up, though even at, say, $15,000 for 24 hours a day for nine months, the result is exploitative of the women. These provisions led the Globe and Mail to conclude that the government would allow all reasonable expenses of a surrogate mother to be covered, implying that the stamp of government approval was being put on non-commercial surrogacy.

Why provide such supports that imply approval? The premise upon which they rest is that non-commercial surrogacy is all right in our society, by implication acceptable morally, physically, psychologically, and socially. Is it? There is informed opposition to it. The Anglican Church's study is based on two years of work, and the book rejecting surrogacy was presented to the royal commission. Nothing has altered the force of the evidence or the relevance of the principles it put forward, so its rejection of surrogacy is still sound. The potential for personal and social harm in all surrogacy remains: exploitation of vulnerable women, the surrogate mother's usually unexpected and possibly enduring grief at the forced separation from her baby, hurt and harm to her existing children—you have heard Juliet raise the issue—destructive impacts on her marriage, and the demeaning of women's reproductive capacities.

The Catholic Church has consistently opposed surrogacy, but it may surprise you to know that the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada also chose this issue for ethical study. We have always tried to encourage them to study difficult issues. They did. They issued policy statement number 59, April 1997, entitled “Preconception Arrangements”, produced by its ethics committee, to guide the profession. Its recommendation states that non-commercial preconception arrangements are also morally unacceptable and may result in more insidious forms of coercion than commercial surrogacy. What message do you give the profession about taking ethical concerns with psychological and social dimensions seriously if you reject what they've honestly put forward?

Why is non-commercial surrogacy morally unacceptable? We've heard that it's perfectly okay. It is wrong to regard a child as a gift that its mother may make to others. Treating that child as her gift makes it a commodity. A woman has no right to treat her child as a commodity and no pre-conception arrangement can give her that right. The evil is central to surrogacy. The child would not be conceived except for the intent to make a gift of it to others. And you have to realize that when I speak of conception, an egg and a sperm put together do not become a baby unless there's a womb for a home. Because the intent mentioned constitutes the origin of the baby, her gift cannot validly be compared to that of a pregnant woman, who being unable to care for the baby to be born, plans for its adoption.

Nor can it be compared to situations I have known, as has Juliet, where within families or within aboriginal cultures, someone giving birth to a child conceived in love and in a relationship and maintained in the context of the family and love then allows another family to bring that child up. There was a girl in my school who had two other sisters. They were in two different families, two sisters who raised the children. We're not talking about that. This is where the whole family contextual thing is maintained.

• 1155

The surrogate mother usually tries to detach herself from the fetus within her, denying it is hers, and saying it's the commissioning couple's, but the baby to be born comes from her body and would not exist except for the nurture her body supplies in the long months of pregnancy. That's why she's the biological mother.

The intent to create and bear a child just to give away rejects the tying of responsibility for care to the bearing of a child. Mothers are logically the primary source of nurture, care, and protection for their children. They're present at their baby's birth and can breast-feed it immediately. Where a baby is born with a genetic disorder, refusal of responsibility for its care by birth mother and commissioners alike is to be feared. See the literature.

The intent to bear the child as a gift, not for himself or herself and to care for, also means that the mother's body and reproductive system are treated as a service. All surrogacy fragments motherhood, diminishes the dignity of reproduction, and conduces to the loss of respect for the procreative powers that are of such intimate significance to women.

My colleague Marsha Hewitt has some pages referring to the fact that this is a subset of an industry that includes pornography and prostitution. I'm not sure I agree with her, but it is the fragmenting off of a particular aspect of a woman's intimate powers.

The resort of career women, actresses, and models to rent-a-womb services for convenience is already occurring in the U.K., and it makes clear the denigration. Public policy that supports and promotes a practice with the potential to harm all women through reduction of child-bearing to a service is unethical.

I also think it's very interesting. I'm not sure what benefit a doctor thinks he's giving the woman who takes very strong hormonal drugs in order to bear another person's child. Normally, you don't do harm to patients. Normally, you treat a patient for her own good. So what is the illness this patient has that they're being treated for? It's one of the reasons I think you should listen to the voice of doctors.

In bearing a child you do not want, you have to detach yourself from it, to think of it as someone else's. But there is both empirical evidence and research showing that whatever women intend and plan, bonding between the fetus and its mother takes place. Why is this so? Human beings are not minds willing their bodies into feelings. We are persons in whom body and mind are conjoined, so that each influences the other. There is research showing that increasing maternal attachment to the fetus in the course of pregnancy is almost universal and that the newborn will identify its mother's voice and prefers it and has been attuned to her movements, temperament, and habits. That research is in this book.

The insecurity often demonstrated by adopted children parted from their birth mothers from the start has been attributed by some experts to such bonding. Thus the assumptions behind the required detachment of the surrogate mother from her child are shaky, being based on an erroneous dualistic theory of human nature. They may lead to misery for mother and child and the commissioning couple if preconception arrangements remain, as they should, unenforceable.

The common rebuttal that a gestational carrier, a dehumanizing term, is not the baby's mother is ill-founded. It is the process of the fetus growing within you and its birth through your energies and birth canal, the very intimacy of the only real one-flesh unity, that make it your baby. This is not abstract ethical reasoning, but common human experience. To understand why it is so, a modern, holistic understanding of the person as a psychosomatic unity, not a dualistic body/mind, is needed.

We do not pay the expenses of kidney donors for their donation in circumstances of life-threatening need. Childlessness is anguishing and worthy of compassionate help, but it is not a life-threatening condition. And it ought not to be done unless the best interests of children are secured. The proposed legal, medical, and counselling services and financial assistance are an ill-conceived inducement to surrogacy.

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Public policy that provides encouragement for women to undergo all the risks entailed in pregnancy and childbirth as a surrogate mother and to do so because of the stamp of official approval is harmful and unsound. I therefore urge you to eliminate subclause 4(4) and paragraph 10(d).

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Creighton.

Thanks to all of you. You've given us a broad spectrum of opinion on this subject.

I'll now invite Mr. Manning to begin his questions.

Mr. Preston Manning (Calgary Southwest, Canadian Alliance): I would like to thank you very much for your presentations and for the obvious thought that has gone into them.

Just so you know where I'm coming from, there are a lot of important interests here, but I do see putting the interests of the child at the top, and you should know that in responding.

My first question is to Sherry and Juliet as the lawyers on the panel here. It pertains to what is or should be the legal status of the embryo or fetus carried by the surrogate mother. We're dealing with legislation here. Ultimately, we have to establish the legal status of all the persons involved in this whole field. Perhaps you could comment on what is or what should be the legal status of that fetus. It gets to the question of whether it is something that can be owned, or is it something that custody...? I think you know what I'm asking.

Ms. Sherry Levitan: Our neighbours to the south are quite litigious by nature. They've had a ten-year jump on us. I've read the case law with interest. In a number of years there were a great number of cases that dealt with exactly that issue, where a husband and wife had gone through IVF, where they had subsequently divorced, and where each of them had different opinions as to what should be done with any cryopreserved embryos. The court really had to determine what status to give those embryos. Some people wondered if we should use common law property principles. Others thought we should use custody principles. What the courts ultimately said in the Unites States was that these embryos have the potential to become life, so we should treat them with the highest respect and dignity. It's a hybrid approach, and the cases are all over the map.

The Supreme Court of Canada has stated that a fetus is not recognized until it is born, until it is an actual child, and I think that is the approach we should continue to take.

That having been said, the disposition of embryos is dealt with at the clinic level by consents that are signed before any procedures are done. People actually give their instructions to the clinic. In some cases in New Jersey they have stated that those kinds of instructions are enforceable. But I don't think you can go much beyond that.

Ms. Juliet Guichon: When the embryo is in the body of a woman, irrespective of the genetic origin of the embryo, then the constitutional law as enunciated in Morgentaler 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada decision, would apply. That is to say that her section 7 rights under the charter would protect her and allow her to have an abortion if she chooses and so on. So the status of the embryo when it's in her body has already been legislated on in the sense the Supreme Court of Canada has decided.

I'd also like to point out that when a woman is pregnant, even if she has agreed to undergo a procedure whereby she's impregnated with an embryo that comes genetically from two other people, it's not always certain that the embryo is not genetically hers. In vitro fertilization, as you know, has a very high failure rate of about 80%, although the success rates are higher when you're using young women of known fertility. But it's always possible that the woman has become pregnant through sexual intercourse with her husband or partner. So when she's pregnant, it's open to question as to whose child it is, and that can be determined later on in the pregnancy. But to say she's pregnant because of IVF and embryo transfer, and therefore she's carrying the child of somebody else, would be hard to establish. Also, it begs the question as to how a woman could ever be pregnant with somebody else's child. What could that mean?

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The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Preston Manning: Second, in the brief Phyllis presented, point 8 gets into why non-commercial surrogacy is morally unacceptable. You give some reasons there, Phyllis. Could you tell us what is the basis of the moral judgments that are made there? We have a lot of moral questions that this committee has to decide upon, and I think it's interesting for us to know what those moral judgments are based on.

Then, Sherry, I gather your position is that non-commercial surrogacy is morally acceptable. Maybe you could comment on why you think that is, but I think more importantly, what your moral judgment is based on that leads you to that conclusion?

All this in 30 seconds. Phyllis, maybe you could tell us first.

Ms. Phyllis Creighton: The strongest point is that we are most fully human when we are self-giving in love. Love requires relationship. Love fully respects what is dependent upon it and what it creates. To fully respect a child is to understand what it means that it grows in your body and is born through your body. It was David Roy of the Montreal Centre for Ethics who first asked, what does it mean? Do we have any idea what it means to be wrenched from the familiarity of the voice and the movements of the mother? So if a woman gives herself in love to create a baby, she should give herself in love to that baby when it's born. And there's no reason to show less respect for that baby than for the child who is put up for adoption. The very intent is important. You wouldn't have this baby unless you intended to give it away. That's not self-giving in the context of love.

Does that help you at all?

To be perfectly honest, I really think that life has a cruciform function. It is true, I'm a Christian, and Christians have special reasons to want to articulate this, but I honestly think all people, humanists, my friends, feel most fully alive when they are giving, and that bonding is essentially the answer to people who say, well, we've always had wars and we always will have. Ah, yes, but we have a human race, and that means that bonding is more profound.

The Chair: Ms. Levitan.

Ms. Sherry Levitan: You speak of the best interests of the children. I completely agree you, Mr. Manning. These children born to surrogates are the most wanted children I have ever seen. They are welcomed with love on all sides and they are treated as every child should be treated, but unfortunately is not always treated.

When we talk about the morals of altruistic surrogacy, in our society, morals really have to do with doing what is right, doing what should be done. How can anything be more moral than one woman helping another to have what she cannot have and to build her own family, without personal gain? In my opinion, that is very moral.

The Chair: Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Manning.

[Translation]

Ms. Picard.

Ms. Pauline Picard (Drummond, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Creighton, I want to tell you that I agree one hundred per cent with everything you said. My opinion of surrogate mothers is exactly the same.

My question is for Ms. Levitan. I would like to know if the code of ethics that you have developed contains a standard covering children born of surrogate mothers who want to know their biological mother. What do you do? What are the baby's rights? Do you consider the babies as a product that can be exported? What do you do if the baby born of the surrogate mother is unhealthy and the parents refuse to recognize it? We have seen cases of that. These are not horror stories; it is reality. Recently, a young couple refused babies being carried by a surrogate mother because they wanted one baby and the surrogate mother was carrying twins. So what is set out in your code of ethics to cover that?

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In your brief, you expressed some reservations with respect to the type of woman who could request the services. Among other things, you spoke of a violence-free environment, and women who are not on social assistance. In your opinion, aren't these conditions too restrictive? In my opinion, they are discriminatory. I would like to hear your position on that.

[English]

The Chair: Ms. Levitan.

Ms. Sherry Levitan: I'll try to go back in order.

The first question was whether or not these children could know their birth mother. In my experience, we build a very strong relationship to get through the pregnancy, through the birth. That relationship stays in place, and every couple, together with the woman that has helped them, decide how much further contact is appropriate, but there is always some contact, in my experience. So I would be quite open to a child's being able to speak to, meet, and get to know the woman who actually gave birth to him or her.

The second question had to do with the rights of the child and the horror story we have heard recently. The contract I prepare on behalf of my client is quite detailed, and the underlying concept is that the couple are working with this carrier and the intention is that they will have a child to love and to take care of at the end of the day, regardless of the health of that child, regardless of how many children, regardless of the sex of that child. That is simply not important. As for the horror story we heard recently, I believe we haven't heard the whole story. There was something else that was creating a discord in that situation. One of the side effects of IVF is a much higher incidence of multiple births. Everyone knows that going in, and couples actually welcome multiple births, because if you've gone through so many years of infertility, you're very happy to take more than one. So I don't see any problems in the way that it's been done lately.

There has been a lot of comment about the child as a product. No one I know thinks of the child that way. It may be an end result. You have a picture in your head of this loving and warm family and putting the baby in the stroller and going for a walk, but these children are not bought and paid for. It is simply not the reality.

The third question had to do with the type of women who are acting as carriers. What we are trying to do is screen. One of my colleagues made a comment about duress, and that's certainly one of the things we want to avoid. That would lead to a bad relationship going forward. We want a happy experience. We want a tight bond going forward. So we feel that some of the restrictions we have recommended, dealing with criminal convictions perhaps, dealing with social assistance, might lead to circumstances that would be less than ideal. We just want to minimize any of the strife, any of the conflicts, any of the things that could create a disharmonious relationship.

The Chair: Thank you, Madame Picard.

Mr. Castonguay.

[Translation]

Mr. Jeannot Castonguay (Madawaska—Restigouche, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is for Ms. Wright. Based on your experience, do you know if, from a practical perspective, many candidates prepared to act as surrogate mothers have been rejected after having received counselling, a medical assessment, or a psychological assessment? Perhaps you could also tell me if, based on your experience, you have seen surrogate mothers who initially were prepared to offer this gift to another person and who, at the end of their pregnancy, changed their minds saying that it was their child and that they wanted to keep it. I do not know if you have experienced that. Why would people living on social assistance be different from others when it comes to being a surrogate mother? That intrigued me to a certain extent, and I would like to hear the reasons behind it.

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[English]

The Chair: I think it was Ms. Wright who was asked.

Ms. Joanne Wright: Thank you.

I hope we hit on a couple of the topics for you. With any surrogates who come to me that are rejected, I want to know what their support system is, their emotional support system, that they've got family support, that their husband is supportive of what they're doing. I want to know that they have their own financial support, and this probably goes into the welfare question as well. They need to be self-supporting, so that this isn't motivated entirely by money. It can't be, it has to come from your heart first, that you truly want to do this.

The Chair: Mr. Castonguay.

[Translation]

Mr. Jeannot Castonguay: Here is my second question, Madam Chair. Have you had clients who at the end of their pregnancies have said that the child was theirs and that they wanted to keep it? Have you experienced that?

[English]

Ms. Sherry Levitan: No, never.

Ms. Juliet Guichon: I would just like to make the point that my research, which, as I said, was based on anecdotes, not statistical data, of which there's very little, revealed, as it seemed to me, that there was a higher propensity among participants in the practice as birth mothers to have had a number of reproductive or sexually unhappy experiences. They'd had an abortion with which they hadn't come to terms, they had surrendered a child for adoption, or they'd been a victim of sexual abuse. I don't know whether the number of people who reported this anecdotally is different from the number who would report it in a control group in the general population, but a psychiatrist named Philip Parker of Dearborn, Michigan, who worked with Noel Keane, interviewed, I think, 100 prospective birth mothers. He hypothesized that this was actually a motivating factor for choosing to become a birth mother under a pre-conception agreement, that there was a desire, in the case of an unresolved abortion, to right the perceived past wrong. In the case of sexual abuse, it was the desire to regain control over the body and to use it in ways that the woman chose to use it. In the case of adoption, it was to maintain a link, in this case, with the child, whereas in adoption the mother had lost any link with her child.

As I say, I don't know whether the number of women who reported this anecdotally is different, but the concern is that the motivations, as reported, are indeed to help people. There's a desire to earn money—these are Americans reporting—but also there are these other underlying psycho-social issues that require further study. Choosing to become pregnant by a person who isn't one's partner, gestating and carrying, is a profoundly intimate and bodily act. It's not surprising that it might have bodily antecedents that require study.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Castonguay.

[Translation]

Mr. Jeannot Castonguay: Obviously, you know that this is very complex for us, and that we will have to take a stand and make recommendations to the minister. There are many issues, and that is why we are meeting with people like you. Despite all of the difficulties involved, if I understand correctly, Ms. Guichon, you would agree with authorizing surrogacy. In the end, there are a lot of unknown factors for everyone. This is a relatively new area. Have I understood you correctly?

[English]

Ms. Juliet Guichon: I understand you. We don't allow the average person to trade their child. We have procedures for adoption, and we regulate that quite strongly. We say, if you are unable to care for your child, the state will supervise the transfer of the child in the child's best interest. My concern about this practice is that it's in the best interest of the participant, but concern for the child cannot be attended to if it's dealt with under contract law. And even if it's conducted in licensed facilities, if women are being paid to do it, there's always the potential for exploitation.

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I share your concern. I agree, it is a very difficult and complex issue, but I do have strong reservations. If you do decide to allow it in licensed facilities, it is important to allow researchers to study it further, so they can give you further advice.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Dromisky.

Mr. Stan Dromisky (Thunder Bay—Atikokan, Lib.): Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

There is no doubt about it, this is a very complex and demanding portion of the bill, and we can't deal with it in a very simplistic manner, saying it's either right or wrong.

I have a case in my riding where one sister was a surrogate for the other recently. It is amazing that the laws that exist already regarding parental leave, unemployment insurance, and so forth come into the picture. I would like to know if there are cases you are familiar with that have complicated situations. Who gets the parental leave, when does the parental leave start, what about unemployment insurance? If a working sister takes time to carry the child, she is unemployed for that period of time—does she get unemployment insurance? What happens when the baby is born? Does she get parental leave from her occupation? Who deserves it?

Could you give us some feedback in those areas?

Ms. Juliet Guichon: I think you just trace the birth mother. The birth mother is entitled. She is also entitled to retain the child unless she chooses to give it up under adoption law. So it would follow that the woman who is pregnant is the woman who is entitled to pregnancy leave. Under the current law it is always the case that the birth mother is the mother, and it is the law's presumption that she will retain custody of the child unless something happens. And nothing is allowed to happen in Ontario, for example, until seven days after the birth, when she's allowed to transfer custody, and even then, within 21 days she may revoke custody. I don't see it as a problem. A pregnant woman is a pregnant woman.

Ms. Sherry Levitan: I know you'll be surprised to hear me disagree.

Parental leave has been put in place, and we now have 12 months in this country. We are breaking ground, because building a family is important, because bonding with the child is important, because setting up the basic framework for development is important. There is a certain element to parental leave that has to do with simple recuperation. One should not be forced to go back to work until one is well. That certainly can be attributed to a birth mother, but the intended parents are the ones who will raise this child and should have the time to build that family. In my opinion, parental leave should be afforded to the parents who will take care of the newborn.

Ms. Juliet Guichon: I don't think we disagree. It would follow the practice of adoption. The woman who is pregnant gets maternity leave. If she transfers custody, then the adopting mother has parental leave. All I mean to say is that we know about the practice of transferring children from birth mothers to other people, and we have legislation that governs that. I don't think this practice is that much different.

Mr. Stan Dromisky: Once the legal contract is signed transferring the child over for adoption—

The Chair: Mr. Dromisky, that is a point of debate too. One side of this debate says there should be a legal contract, and then it comes under contract law. The other side is saying there shouldn't be a contract. We can't assume—

Ms. Juliet Guichon: But once the adoption papers are signed, once the adopting couple have the child, then parental leave kicks in for them.

Ms. Phyllis Creighton: I want to take us back for a moment, because—

The Chair: Ms. Creighton, I can only let you speak if you are speaking in answer to the question that has been posed.

Ms. Phyllis Creighton: I'm going to suggest that we shouldn't allow the notion that the practical is only the empirical. One of the greatest thinkers in this country has said something very profound: the moral is the practical.

There is the issue of contract. You heard Ms. Wright say they aren't entirely motivated by money. I don't know about you, but when I read in the Oxford dictionary that consideration in a contractual agreement is “anything given or promised or forborne by one party in exchange for the promise or undertaking of another”, I think that's exactly what you're contemplating in this regulated scheme when you have such elastic notions of expenses.

• 1225

I think if you wish to pursue Juliet's concern about what we really know about this, you will have to do something we've tried for 25 years to get the medical community and the government to do, and that is, to remove secrecy and anonymity. You will have to be able to track the woman who gives birth, the mother, and the family over a long period of time to know what you're dealing with, to find out whether I'm just talking theory or whether human nature and the moral, which is the practical, are real.

Mr. Stan Dromisky: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr. Lunney.

Mr. James Lunney (Nanaimo—Alberni, Canadian Alliance): I think we all agree that there are a lot of unsavoury aspects to this whole subject. Abuses have happened where there haven't been regulations. Examples have been mentioned today and some are outlined in the article from Ms. Guichon, such as a couple deciding to divorce and then encouraging the surrogate mother to have an abortion and the other example where the child was born sick, and the man wanted to cancel the contract because he hadn't bargained on a sick child. So there certainly are a lot of thorny issues there.

I want to go back to something Sherry Levitan brought up regarding contract and payment. We know that the draft legislation is not supposed to permit payment directly, but I thought I heard you say that while there is no legislation, there is compensation of about $2,500 a month. Did I hear augmentation to a maximum of $5,000 a month for expenses? If I understood that correctly, that totals up to about $67,000 for a pregnancy. It's a pretty strong inducement. Maybe I misunderstood those numbers. Perhaps you could correct me on that.

From your perspective, is there any consideration that would prevent a person from creating a career in surrogacy and just going from cyclical? Would you recommend limiting these to one or two? How do you perceive doing that?

Ms. Sherry Levitan: The first issue is about compensation. My comments were twofold. There are the out-of-pocket expenses, and they are things such as life insurance, maternity clothes, medication, transportation, and child care. These are costs that she incurs because she is pregnant. We reimburse her for those, and there's a cap usually of about $5,000. So that's one issue.

The other is what we think of as the fee, the general expense amount, as it is referred to in the contract. Currently, it's on average between $15,000 and $18,000. So for your $67,000, I think you would just add them in a few extra times. We're recommending a cap because we don't want those kinds of numbers to be bandied about. We're recommending $2,500 a month, which is usually over 10 months because we start before a pregnancy is instituted.

On your second concern about a career in surrogacy, I will defer to Joanne Wright as to whether she has ever met any women who might want to turn this into a career. Whether or not I personally believe it should be done, if we support a woman's right to choose to do this, I don't think that constitutionally we could limit her to do it once or twice. I don't think we could get away with that.

Joanne, do you have anything to add?

Ms. Joanne Wright: No.

The Chair: Mr. Lunney, are you satisfied with your answers?

Mr. James Lunney: Yes. Thank you. I wondered where you were coming from on that.

The Chair: Thank you.

Ms. Wasylycia-Leis, please.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP): Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I apologize for missing part of the session due to running back and forth to the House.

I did want to ask Juliet and Phyllis a question. This whole area must have been thoroughly vetted by the royal commission going back 10 years. We must have considerable testimony from organizations and individuals that led to the recommended prohibition on surrogacy. Can you give us any help in terms of understanding the depth of feeling Canadians have around this whole area and how we can actually ensure that the idea of a prohibition continues and that we prevent any kind of move toward commodification and commercialization in the area of reproductive health?

• 1230

Ms. Phyllis Creighton: The average Canadian still learns from newspapers and the media. It is much easier to tell a heart-rending story about anguish without going into any of the deaths. It has always been so.

I remember years ago being on a television show called Speaking Out with Noel Keane. I was startled at the affirmation that Noel Keane had a reputable practice. Noel Keane didn't even know what he put in print, which is how I won the tally vote, although he had a young woman with him to speak about the wonders of it.

I think a very serious educational effort would be needed before you would have informed public opinion.

The royal commission did an awful lot of reading and thinking. One of the members, Bartha Knoppers, also had been a member of the group in Quebec that had come up with the position that resulted in a contract being identified in the civil code as unenforceable simply because of the inevitable dehumanizing. I don't hesitate to use that word.

I think if people really took time to reflect on the experience the woman is going through.... It's not just that a woman who is a so-called carrier runs the risk of unknown long-term consequences from drugs used to synchronize her system in order to receive the baby. It's also the case that women need to examine carefully what that might mean for their future fertility, for possible death, or for C-section, which is not a trivial matter. Neither is bearing twins a trivial matter at all. It increases the life risks to you considerably. So there's a great deal of education that could be done.

But I don't think there's any evidence at all. In fact, the evidence we have from polling shows that across the country there is general support for not having commercial surrogacy, not only for not having women entirely motivated by money but not motivated at all. I have real trouble with people who say, I just want to make a gift. But then you want money for it?

Many of us give thousands upon thousands of hours to studying, thinking, and working on issues, and we don't ask for a penny. I earn my living as a translations editor, réviseuse de traduction du Dictionnaire biographique du Canada, which I'm very proud of. It's the best historical work in the country, the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Those are some of my thoughts.

We had considerable luck. We took this document, which is our contribution to the royal commission, before the General Synod, which is the elected parliament of the Anglican Church of Canada. There were 300 people, and we wrestled with it over the course of a week so that people got an opportunity to think about it, and they came to the same consensus we did, that it is insupportable.

Ms. Juliet Guichon: I'd like to speak to the royal commission. As you may know, the royal commission listened to whoever wished to speak to them as they moved across the country. They allowed people to speak to them in public but also privately. They did hear terrible stories of anguish. I don't mean in any way to diminish the suffering people bear if they're unable to have children. But they also listened to the people who were submitting.

They would have drafted a stronger document than the one that is now on the table. They would have caused in vitro fertilization practitioners to lose their licence if they transferred an embryo into a woman who was not intending to rear the child. I know that caused a lot of consternation among infertility practitioners. Infertility physicians are faced daily with the suffering, and they want to help and to do the right thing. But many of the people who presented to the royal commission were in a position to stand back from it and to hear other stories.

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The royal commission report was controversial, there is no doubt about it, particularly in medical circles. This would not cause people to lose their licences. But the royal commission also took a very strong view that the woman who had agreed to surrender a child was in some sense a victim, and so it would not subject her to any criminal sanction if she engaged in it. That was controversial also, because of the premise that we are all autonomous human beings over 18 and we can make our own decisions. It was controversial, and they did wrestle with it.

The Chair: Ms. Levitan.

Ms. Sherry Levitan: The royal commission collected its data ten years ago. When the average Canadian thought of surrogacy, the Baby M case came to mind. It was traditional surrogacy. Given the last ten years, as infertility rates are climbing and ever more people understand more of what's going on, or perhaps have friends who have gone through infertility, and have a better awareness of the issues, I don't think we can use ten-year-old data to tell us what Canadians think about surrogacy. I don't think they have, at this point, the necessary information to make those decisions. I think more information has to be disseminated before we can make that call.

Ms. Phyllis Creighton: The royal commission itself said:

Views on preconception arrangements are based on fundamentally different convictions about human nature and about how the world works or ought to work.

They said they were not persuaded by the arguments of proponents for either commercial or non-commercial surrogacy. I think you could certainly do far worse than to reread the chapter in the second volume—the bit that I have is at page 683, but it starts earlier than than.

It is very fine thinking, and you can get back at the evidence too, because Juliet's research volume is still there. If you make up your mind on statistics.... There is a lot of crime around. What the royal commission tried to do was articulate some principles that we want to uphold. What kind of society do we want to have? Do we want a society that trades in pregnancies? Do we want a society that exchanges children for money? Is that what we want? It's fundamental values we're working to articulate, and their values were quite clear. There was human dignity, actual and potential harm to the family—so they're about care—and they didn't want to set up adversarial relations.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Not seeing any other questioners and knowing that we have yet to deal with a motion that is before us, on behalf of the committee, I thank you for coming and for expressing your thoughts today, even though it is a limited period of time. I would ask if you are willing to answer other questions that we might have the clerk forward to you. At the same time, I would like to thank you for the many years most of you have spent in and around these topics, which are compelling to us right now. We are certainly not experts. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. We may tap into it again.

Ms. Juliet Guichon: I thank you for the seriousness with which you take this, and thank you as a citizen for bearing this burden.

Ms. Phyllis Creighton: Me too.

The Chair: How nice.

Ladies and gentlemen, we now have 20 minutes before the end of this meeting, and as you will recall, a week ago today Mr. Merrifield presented to us a motion he would like to put before us. Unfortunately, the meeting on Thursday at which it would have been debated was cancelled, so we are going to take some time this morning to do it. Mr. Merrifield's motion was that the committee recommend that the government take immediate action to ban human reproductive cloning in Canada. That is the motion before us, but I understand there is an amendment coming forward. As the rules of order suggest that you always debate and decide on the amendment first, I will ask the mover of that amendment to put it forward.

[Translation]

Ms. Pauline Picard: Madam Chair, I would like to move, after Mr. Merrifield's motion, that we add, following the words “human reproductive cloning in Canada”, the words “by passing Bill C-336 for this purpose, as rapidly as possible”.

[English]

The Chair: That amendment is within the general intent of the original motion, so it is accepted. Madam Picard, as the mover, would you like to speak to it briefly, please, keeping in mind how little time we have?

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[Translation]

Ms. Pauline Picard: Yes. I will ask Mr. Ménard to speak on my behalf.

Mr. Réal Ménard (Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, BQ): Madam Chair, I believe we need to thank our colleagues from the Alliance for introducing the motion and also our colleague, Ms. Picard, for amending it, since the issue is basically as follows. People from outside this Parliament, who have nothing to do with political parties and no partisan attachment, have been pointing out all summer that there was a legal vacuum.

This legal vacuum means that a private or public laboratory could carry out cloning activities. The risk is small, even infinitesimal. This is true. But the question that this committee must ask itself is whether we want to run that risk. I believe that the situation has been outlined by the main party leaders.

Our colleague, Ms. Picard, has been concerned with these issues for a number of years; she introduced a bill that was simple, practical, operational and well thought-out, and that proposed a provision under the criminal code that would cover anyone carrying out cloning activities in a laboratory, so that these activities would be subject to the legal rules in place.

What we are saying is that we should pass Ms. Picard's bill. This committee must strongly urge the government to pass this bill quickly, and once we have eliminated the risk we have been talking about, we could still study all the extremely complex issues that have been brought up by the various witnesses.

I will end on that, Madam Chair. The government cannot tell us that it is reviewing this situation and it is being looked at as a whole. One of the conclusions of the royal commission was in fact that the cloning issue should be dealt with very quickly and then the other issues looked at. The two areas can be considered separately. We can still go ahead and change the criminal code, create an offence, pass Ms. Picard's bill and then make proposals to the government about the various other issues.

In any case, a consensus exists concerning cloning. None of the witnesses have dissented on that. There is a consensus, I really believe, among the political parties, and that is why we are making this proposal. We would be extremely disappointed, even crushed, if this motion were to be defeated. It would seem to us irresponsible on the part of the government if it were to reject our willingness to co-operate and thereby jeopardize future work.

[English]

The Chair: You've heard one strong speech in favour of the amendment, which is to adopt the private member's bill, and I'll take one speaker against.

Mr. Ray Bonin (Nickel Belt, Lib.): I have a point of order. I have difficulty with the direction this committee is taking. We have been mandated by the House to study a draft bill. Now we're into another bill that we haven't been mandated to do and haven't undertaken to do at this point. We're in the process, with the motion, of addressing an issue that will come back under clause-by-clause. So as a committee, if we choose to defeat this motion for practical reasons, when we get to clause-by-clause, will we have dealt with it? Normally, you don't deal with an issue twice. I think this should be deferred until we do the clause-by-clause.

Mr. Réal Ménard: That's not a point of order.

Mr. Ray Bonin: It is a point of order, most definitely. Actually, it's three of them.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: On the point of order.

The Chair: All right, Madam.

Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis: I won't take up much time of the committee, but I think it's worth reminding the committee that the bill referred to in this amendment to the motion, Bill C-336, is a successor to Bill C-247, also introduced by Madame Picard, which was debated in Parliament and referred to the health committee, where we dutifully discussed it and made amendments, but the matter was left to rest because of a commitment made by the government to rapidly introduce legislation to deal with the broad range of reproductive technology issues. So I think it's perfectly in order for this matter now to come to the committee, given the time that has elapsed and given the time yet to come before Parliament will have been able to ensure that its will has been implemented.

The Chair: I want to thank Mr. Bonin for raising this whole point. We don't want to preclude the fullness of our discussions later. On the other hand, right now the actual issue on the table is whether you want to add a few words to a motion we haven't dealt with.

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I know Mr. Bonin really doesn't want to deal with this motion because he feels it confuses what we're actually charged with doing. I think he made that argument clearly. But just for the next couple of minutes we've had an argument for and we've had an argument against the passage of the private member's bill as the vehicle—because that's what the amendment says, the bill as the vehicle—if we decide to pass the whole motion.

I want to call the question only on the amendment so that we know exactly what we're debating.

Mr. Bonin.

Mr. Ray Bonin: Madam Chair, we need to know if the motion is acceptable. If the motion's not acceptable, the amendment is not acceptable. So I'll make it very simple....

Excuse me, Monsieur Ménard, please.

The Chair: I've already checked that with the clerk.

Mr. Ray Bonin: Please, we'll let the meeting be chaired by the chair.

If we deal with that, will we have dealt with it when we get into clause-by-clause? At least it's a point of information if you don't want to make it a point of order.

An hon. member: Point of order.

The Chair: Just a minute. I want to answer this question.

The clerk has assured me that the original motion is in order because it's within, and actually a very specific piece of, the subject matter we're dealing with. So the motion was accepted for that reason.

Mr. Ray Bonin: And my question is, when we get to clause-by-clause will we have dealt with that issue?

The Chair: The motion is framed as a recommendation. The committee recommends to the government.

Mr. Ray Bonin: To the House?

The Chair: No, to the government, which means to the minister. He can reject it if he wants or go along with it.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: A point of order.

[English]

The Chair: Okay.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: I just want to be clear on how we are doing this. Once you call the vote, we are not supposed to hear points of order, and you had already called the vote at that point. In any case, it is reasonable to assume that if you allow debate-

[English]

The Chair: No, I didn't call for the vote.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: It seems reasonable to assume that if you allow debate, it is because you recognize that the motion is in order. Otherwise, you would not have allowed debate.

[English]

The Chair: I didn't yet call for the vote. I called for a speaker for and a speaker against, and ever since I've been interrupted with points of order. Being such a nice chair, I've let all have them.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: You had called the vote.

[English]

The Chair: The fact of the matter is, I am now calling for the vote on the amendment only. The vehicle through which the first part would be accommodated would be that particular bill that belongs to Madam Picard.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish (Mississauga Centre, Lib.): I'd like to speak against. You asked for a speaker against.

The Chair: No, we've had a speaker against. Mr. Bonin made it clear.

Mrs. Carolyn Parrish: All right.

The Chair: Is this another point of order?

[Translation]

Mr. Yvon Charbonneau (Anjou—Rivière-des-Prairies, Lib.): I would like to hear your argument about House committees being empowered to make recommendations to the government, since it seems to me that the primary rule of House committees is to make recommendations to the House. The way this motion is worded, it is a recommendation to the government. Is this not something that you should clear up for us, the issue of whether this motion is acceptable or not?

[English]

The Chair: No. I'm going to rule that the intent of the mover is in his motion. We can't change the intent of the mover. He wants to recommend to the minister, knowing full well that the minister can accept or not accept.

I'm going to call the question. All those in favour of the amendment only, Bill C-336 being added to the motion, please raise your hands.

[Translation]

A voice: We want a recorded division.

Mr. Réal Ménard: We want a recorded vote.

[English]

The Chair: We'll have a recorded vote.

(Amendment negatived [See Minutes of Proceedings])

• 1250

The Chair: We'll now ask the mover of the main motion to address his points.

Mr. Rob Merrifield (Yellowhead, Canadian Alliance): Thank you for considering it.

I'm not here to try to convince anyone around the table. We all understand the dynamics of this important subject of reproductive cloning. It's not that it goes against the bill we're trying to look as a draft. In fact, it coincides with it. In fact, every witness we have brought forward since we have been a committee has also endorsed the idea of prohibiting reproductive cloning.

That's not why I'm trying to bring it forward. I'm not trying to twist anyone's arm. But I am trying to convince you that some of those people who have brought these issues forward have suggested.... I can go through a list of names here: Jennifer Leddy, Madam Picard, Dr. Patricia Baird, Dr. Margaret Somerville, and on and on. Actually, even Yvon Charbonneau has suggested—and these are his exact words—that to his knowledge no one is advocating human cloning, so why do we wait a year or a year and a half before we prohibit this practice?

I think we're all on the same team on this side in terms of suggesting that we should do something. But more than that, we have people in the United States, and also in a cult also associated with Canada, saying publicly that they will bring this practice into being within the year. In fact, they've suggested that an Italian doctor, Antinori, and another one out of Kentucky, Dr. Zavos, have said they will clone by November of this year.

So I'm saying to you that the reason and the rationale isn't to suggest anything different from what we would do in the end. But when we see the train coming, for us to stand on the track and be hit by it is a ridiculous thing for us to consider. And it's time sensitive, very time sensitive.

I was even struck by the interfaith service we had last Thursday, where we invited even this group. I'm saying thank goodness here in Canada we have the freedom of religion.... That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that we have a group alive and well in Canada that is saying they're going to bring this practice of reproductive cloning in now.

I could have worded the bill in such a way that we also prohibit therapeutic cloning, which the bill does as well, but I wanted to make it in such a way that nobody can argue the intent that we should do this, that we should not allow this to happen in Canada. We could get all dragged into Bill C-336. It'll be under the Criminal Code, so let's not get excited about that. Although I agree that it should come under a law, this is a recommendation to the minister.

Even when we were in Geneva this spring the minister suggested to the world that Canada must lead the way in having a conference and a convention against cloning around the world. Well, you can't say you're going to lead the world and stop something when you don't practice or put something in the legislation in your own backyard.

As a committee, this may be the last thing we do, because next week the personalities around this table could change, with completely different witnesses. If we're going to do anything collectively as a committee, then we have to do it now. I never want it to be said in the history books, as they're written in Canada, that under our watch we failed to act. Collectively as a committee, under our watch we should do what is a responsible thing to do for Canada. We need to do it now because of the time sensitivity of this.

Thank you, Madam.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Merrifield.

That's one speaker for. We'll have a speaker against.

Mr. Dromisky.

Mr. Stan Dromisky: Madam Speaker, there are so many things racing through my mind relating to this whole topic. I know my responsibility as a member of the committee. I think we all do. I know we have a major task. We have a bill to go through. We're going to be spending a lot of time here. We have a lot of information to come across our desks and a lot of information is to be presented by the experts who come before us in the weeks ahead. There's going to be a lot of debate. Time is very important.

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What frightens me here and really concerns me is that we're going to treat this whole thing piecemeal. We're going to take a look at it piece by piece, section by section, and this is a very strong possibility, because we do not know the ramifications of supporting such a motion, in the immediate term, as in the longer. Do we have systems to support, to implement such a motion? What will be the processes involved? How will the House of Commons be involved in this? If the House of Commons does become involved, where does the committee stand regarding its responsibilities pertaining to this section in the bill and all the other related factors?

I know it's only a recommendation to the minister, but I'm just taking a look at both sides of the picture, if the minister rejects it, or delays it, or accepts it, or it's the responsibility of the committee. There are so many ramifications here that are so confusing. It's not as simple as it is being presented. Therefore, I think what this committee has to do is go ahead with its responsibilities, full speed ahead with the bill, and get into the process that will eventually lead us to the point where we're going to deal with it clause by clause. So I would like to make the motion to have this motion before us deferred.

The Chair: That motion is in order. He wants to defer it. Have you got a time to defer it until?

Mr. Stan Dromisky: I understand that the only part that's debatable is the time factor. I don't have a time factor in my mind, except that this motion be worked in with the bill. In other words, when we're dealing with this portion in the bill, that's when we'll be dealing with it, and when this committee will make a decision whether or not we should ban cloning.

The Chair: You're changing that to make the decision when you deal with that portion of the bill. Is that what you're implying?

Mr. Stan Dromisky: That's right.

The Chair: That motion is in order. The motion to defer is not debatable, so we'll vote on that right away. I'll call that question.

The motion on the floor now is the motion to defer. It is not debatable, so I can't take any speakers.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: That is not in order. I am seeking guidance on the meaning of your decision; we have a motion that says the exact opposite of what you are proposing to do, and you are stating that a motion that we had accepted is in order, one which says the opposite. Could you please tell us which Standing Order allows this?

[English]

The Chair: No, the original motion has an intent. Mr. Dromisky did not even speak against the substance of the original motion. He spoke against the timing and suggested that we defer. But in the rules of order a motion to defer takes precedence over the motion on the floor and it's non-debatable, you vote on it right away. So I'm going to call the question. Those in favour of the motion to defer please raise your hand.

Mr. Rob Merrifield: On a point of order.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: Under which clause do you see that?

[English]

The Chair: There is a point of order. Mr. Merrifield.

Mr. Rob Merrifield: I would take exception to your saying that the intent of the bill is immediate action, not reproductive cloning. That's what you're suggesting this does not go against, and I'd suggest it does go directly against the intent of the motion.

The Chair: It doesn't matter if it goes against, because it's not adjusting the intent of your motion. A motion to defer has a status of its own. It's non-debatable and one votes on it as such. The committee is saying through this motion that they don't want to deal with the topic right now, they want to deal with it later. It's a perfectly legitimate position for a committee to take and for a motion to be made around.

Mr. Réal Ménard: Which clause? We want to read the clause, because we will never have a debate if the government says we can have more debate later.

[Translation]

What is the use of tabling a motion? Show us the relevant order. This does not make any sense. A motion is tabled and we are told that there will be no debate because it is going to be deferred. There will never be any debate in committee. There is a word for people who do not want to debate in committee. This is not normal. Please show it to me.

[English]

The Chair: I'm being challenged essentially on the idea that the motion to defer does not take precedence. The clerk does not have his book with him.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: Madam Chair, we cannot agree to proceed in this way. Think about it for a moment. The motion can be defeated. The government can use its majority to defeat the motion, but we cannot—

• 1300

Madam Chair, do you agree with us that within the normal proceedings of a committee, we can not decide to defer a motion? If we can, there will never be any debate. Provide us with the rule. We will study it.

[English]

The Chair: My remembrance of the rules is that a motion to defer does take precedence. You vote on it immediately; there is no debate on it. Mr. Ménard's remembrance of the rule is different, and the clerk does not have his book. My feeling is that at the beginning of the next meeting the clerk will give us the thing from the book, which will determine our actions.

As a result, this meeting is now adjourned. We will deal with it immediately at the beginning of the next meeting.