Committees as agents of public policy: the Standing Committee on Health.

Long before phrases such as "democratic deficit" and "empowerment of MPs' became fashionable the 1985 Report of the Special Committee on Reform of the House of Commons (McGrath Report) called for a strengthened role for standing committees of the House in shaping public policy. It recommended "wider use of parliamentary committees to review draft legislation, to conduct general inquiries when policy choices have not been made, and to bring in draft bills." Overall, it insisted that standing committees should play an important part in influencing policy through the legislative process. As a result the Standing Orders were modified to allow some Bills to be send to committee before Second Reading. This has been done on a few occasions. However it was not until very recently that the government went even further and following the recommendation of the McGrath Report asked a Parliamentary Committee to review and report on draft legislation before it was even introduced in the House. The issue was assisted human reproduction and in 2001, Allan Rock, Minister of Health, asked the Standing Committee on Health to examine and formulate policy on this complex and controversial topic. This article reflects upon the use of this approach to giving members of Parliament a greater role in the legislative and policy process.

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When the Health Committee began its consultation, assisted human reproduction had for more than a decade been the focus of numerous government and societal activities. From 1989 to 1993, a Royal Commission on the New Reproductive Technologies (RCNRT) studied the social, ethical, health, research, legal and economic implications. In its lengthy 1993 report entitled Proceed with Care, the Commission made 293 recommendations. A central recommendation declared that reproductive technologies required a federal legislative framework immediately to implement prohibitions in areas such as selling human eggs, sperm, zygotes, or fetal tissue; advertising for, paying for, or acting as an intermediary for surrogacy; and using embryos in research related to cloning. The report also focused on the creation of the National Reproductive Technologies Commission (NRTC) to oversee licensing and to monitor reproductive technologies and practices.

In 1995, then Health Minister, Diane Marleau announced a voluntary moratorium on certain related practices, such as cloning of human embryos, commercial surrogacy, buying and selling of eggs, sperm and embryos, and other activities that were deemed to be unethical and socially unacceptable. In 1996, the new Minister of Health, David Dingwall, introduced Bill C-47, cited as the Human Reproductive and Genetic Technologies Act, in order to establish boundaries around some of the technologies and prohibit certain practices. This Bill included additional prohibitions against the use of human sperm, eggs, or embryos without the informed consent of the donor and against research on human embryos later than 14 days after conception or their creation for research purposes only. After receiving some legislative scrutiny in a House of Commons sub-committee, the Bill died on the order paper with the call of the 1997 general election.

Over the same period and behind the scenes, public servants were working on the issues raised by the Royal Commission. From 1993 to 1996, Health Canada coordinated a Federal-Provincial-Territorial Working Group to advise deputy ministers of …