Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Human Rights
Issue 10 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, October 2, 2006
The Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights met this day at 4:09 p.m. to examine and report upon Canada's international obligations in regards to the rights and freedoms of children.
Senator A. Raynell Andreychuk (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: This is the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, and we are here to examine and report upon Canada's international obligations in regards to the rights and freedoms of children.
We have before us today several witnesses. I believe the agenda has just changed slightly. Our first presenter will be Mr. Barry Stevens. Please give an introduction, and then we will go to questions and answers. It is not necessary to read the entire brief, just the high points so we can then turn to the senators for questions.
Welcome to the committee. The floor is yours.
Barry Stevens, Founding Member, Alliance of People Produced by Assisted Reproductive Technology: I thank the committee and the Senate for letting me speak to you today. I am a film maker by profession and founding member of Alliance of People Produced by Assisted Reproductive Technology, APPART, which is self-explanatory. I was conceived by anonymous donor insemination in the U.K. a long time ago. I made a film called Offspring, which is about my search for my donor's identity. It has been seen in this country on CBC television and in other countries as well. I gave the clerk a DVD of the film; it is a little less than an hour long. It is not a boring film, it is actually quite fun. If you want to watch it, it is available.
I would like to address some questions about human rights and the children who, like me, are conceived by artificial means using sperm, eggs or embryos provided by persons outside of the recipient family. I want to argue that the preservation of the anonymity of gamete and embryo providers is unfair. I believe it to be a violation of, what I conceive to be, the child's rights and probably contrary to the United Nations convention. The children of donor conception should have available to them at their maturity, or majority, identifying information on their biological parents. This information should be part of their birth certificate documentation. This opinion would be widely shared, if not universally, by the vast majority of people conceived the way I was conceived.
I do not believe I have to go into the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. You know it far better than I know it.
The child...shall have...as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.
Later it says:
States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.
It also states:
...States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to re-establishing speedily his or her identity.
The Assisted Human Reproduction Act was passed by the Parliament of Canada in 2004. The first principle that Parliament declares in that act, in the admirable spirit of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, is that:
The health and well-being of children born through the application of assisted human reproductive technologies must be given priority in all decisions respecting their use.
It is an eminently sensible principle. The act goes on to violate or ignore it. It fails to provide that those children have access to their full identities, and to have knowledge of who their biological parents were.
This fits into the long pattern of assisted reproductive technology, or donor insemination primarily, since that is the bulk of the history. It is only in the last 20 years that eggs and embryos have been featured in assisted reproduction.
It is not the trend. There are a lot of nations now, including the U.K., on which our legislation had strong influence. The U.K. has now ended the anonymity of sperm providers and egg providers, along with Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the two largest states of Australia and New Zealand, and a few other states.
To depart from the brief, which you have and can look at and we can talk about, I wish to give you a bit of the history.
When I was conceived, donor insemination was just starting to take off in a big way. The first donor insemination recorded was in 1884. It was done as an experiment, without the mother's or the father's consent or knowledge. One of the medical students in the class donated sperm. The father in that case had lost his fertility due to gonorrhea and they did not want to reveal that to his wife, so it was done in secret. That climate of secrecy and deception characterized fertility medicine for a very long time.
When I was conceived, about seven years after the war ended, the people who treated my parents were pioneers, the first two or three people in the U.K. or Europe to do it, I believe, before it was done in Canada at all. They went public in 1945, and there was a huge outcry. The Church of England said it was a sin and a threat to the family because it depended on masturbation. The House of Lords, in particular, was very upset about it because it threatened the inheritance of titles. They considered banning and even criminalizing it. The outcry was tremendous. In the end, they backed off because there was a countermove to allow women to have children even if their husbands were infertile.
It ended up being very secret. Everyone, including my parents, was instructed to be completely secret about the procedure. People would never know who the biological father was. That tradition of secrecy and anonymity has persisted to this day.
In our society, which is far more open and where everything is discussed, the opposite trend is taking place. I feel that this country has made the wrong choice in the act in order to preserve that tradition of anonymity and secrecy. I would argue that it is to the detriment of the children in a few ways.
The easiest to understand is, perhaps, in terms of health. Obviously, nature and nurture are the most obvious with respect to the inheritance of weaknesses and disease. Currently, the situation in this country is much better than it was because we now have an act, whereas before there was nothing. These are early days; the agency has not yet been set up. The act provides that a snapshot is taken of the donor's health at the time he donates, and that is it. They know who he is, but they will not communicate that information. That snapshot is, generally speaking, of a young man.
I was very struck by Allan Rock when he was Minister of Health and we were dealing with some of these issues. He was public about his situation; I am not disclosing secret information. The minister suffered from, and was successfully treated for prostate cancer. He had the test because his own father had died of the disease. The minister was obviously a man of middle age when he discovered that. If his father had donated as a young man, he would not have known that and would not have known to be tested.
Another example is a woman I know who has two children by donor insemination. One of the children suffers from a mysterious set of illnesses. They have had a hard time getting to the root of it. They have asked the clinic for information on the donor and have tried to contact him, but they get nowhere.
It would be much better to track a donor's health history throughout his life and to stay in touch with the donor. It would also be good to have information collected from clinics from the past, so that the many tens of thousands of people in this country who are conceived in this way might have an equal chance of good health — as other children in this country.
It is not just health. There are also issues of consanguinity which are fed by anonymity. The less one knows about the donor, the more likely it is that one might meet and marry someone who is his or her half-sibling or even, conceivably, biological father. This may seem extremely unlikely, but remember that people do cluster in groups. Like- minded people tend to get to know each other, and sometimes they get to know each other because they have had treatment in the same place.
I know of two cases where the people's children play together. Both the mothers and children do not know but I actually do know — through a quirk of fate — that the mothers have the same donor. This situation is partly taken care of in the new act by the fact that if a person contacts the clinic, they will tell that person whether he or she is about to marry his or her half-sibling.
There is the whole area of identity. This is perhaps a little harder to justify and argue for strongly. This is a much more emotional and personal matter: The idea that there is some kind of value in knowing from whom we come and to whom we are biologically related.
There was a time when the trend was that the social family was all that mattered, and that biology did not count for everything. I suppose, because of racism and the whole hideous story of parts of the 21st century, where blood relationship was everything, we backed away from that trend a great deal. I feel that, for most of us, knowing who our relatives and progenitors are is very important, and is also as important to the child. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child speaks about identity and knowing who one's parents are. I am not sure what the legal thought is on that matter. To me, it is clear that there is a strong need for this knowledge. My own search for my biological relatives, which has been somewhat successful in that I have found about 20 relatives, including about 10 half-siblings and one brother, who I am very close to, is perhaps less a narrative of trauma and wrongs righted than it is simply a delightful discovery.
There is also a tremendous movement happening in the world where, thanks to the new tools of DNA technology and the Internet, people are finding each other at an incredibly fast rate. I believe one can certainly argue that children are not being well-served if they do not know who their biological relatives are, for the dangers of consanguinity, health and identity.
There are counterarguments I am happy to deal with and I am sure you are familiar with, that donors have rights or donors will disappear if it is not anonymous. I do not feel these arguments hold a lot of water, and I would be very glad to talk about them.
That will suffice as an introduction. Please have a discussion about it. I would like to hear your comments.
The Chairman: Thank you for your paper and for the comments you have made here.
I take it, in the context we are talking about — the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — you sum it up by saying that our Assisted Human Reproduction Act referred in the preamble to the principle of abiding by the spirit of the convention on the rights of the child. You then go on to say, if I am interpreting you correctly, there is very little reference to it. It basically goes on to talk about reproduction vis-à-vis adults, systems and government.
Mr. Stevens: Yes. Increasingly, reproductive technology is framed in terms of freedom of choice and the rights of adults of different kinds and in different situations to have families. The rights of the child are often left out of those discussions. Sometimes it is in a way that we find — when I say ``we,'' I mean offspring — to be bizarre and quite annoying.
The Chairman: In your assessment, is it because the technology is not fully understood and it is evolving? I will use the example of adoption. We said we want to have adopted children as close to natural-born children as possible, but we then discovered all kinds of differences because there were biological parents with whom the child may or may not want to have contact. One parent may be threatened by that, another may not. There were found to be financial and health implications, et cetera. I am not sure we have worked through all of those issues, but at least we were trying to make a child equal.
In this case, is there still a layer of the science that precludes having a debate, or is it simply that we have not had the debate?
Mr. Stevens: I believe we have just not had the debate. I do not feel there is anything particular about the science that prevents it.
The adoption model is a good one. There are differences, but there are similarities as well. One difference of an assisted reproductive model from an adoptive family is that usually — not always — one parent is biologically connected to the child and one is not. That presents a certain family configuration that is different and has its own problems. Adoption is the trend we should be following in this field. Adoption is 15 or 20 years ahead.
Depending on what side of the debate one is on, one would see it as a trend or not. In this country the field of adoption seems to be moving toward greater openness, certainly in my province of Ontario. In other provinces, there is more of a recognition of the rights of adoptees to know who they came from and also much more sympathy on the part of the law and regulations for birth parents. This is less forthcoming for us.
Senator Nancy Ruth: I am always interested in the question of competing rights and how one balances and weighs that all out. In general, I am sympathetic. It would be very useful to me, if I had the same biological condition as you, to know who my parents were.
However, I come from a community where I am familiar with many same-sex women who use one kind of reproductive technology or another. For them, there is a very strong social argument that they do not want the father involved — period. Even if they know who the father is, they usually have legal agreements limiting his access to the child and any threat of stealing the child or demanding rights that would normally, perhaps, be given in a court if there was a separation or a divorce on custody issues. These women feel very strongly about this. How would you respond to those concerns?
Mr. Stevens: It is strange, because lesbians have sometimes led the way in terms of open identity sperm donation. In those cases, it is obvious that was not a natural or standard way of producing a baby. However, it is possible for a heterosexual couple to lie and claim the child as their own.
The sperm bank of California, which was a collective set up by lesbians in Berkeley, pioneered open identity release with sperm donors. It has gone from 25 per cent to about 75 per cent of donors choosing — this is a choice matter whether to be anonymous or identifiable — to be identifiable to their offspring upon reaching the age of 18. The vast majority of couples, both heterosexual single women and lesbian couples, choose open identity donors. I do not believe that it is a completely uniform opinion.
There is also a difference between knowing who the biological father is and making that information at some point available to the child, once again for very serious reasons of health and the well-being of the child as well as for reasons of identity. There is a difference between that and having the biological father involved as a parent, which presents legal and all kinds of other complexities.
I do not feel there is a necessary and immediate clash between the interests of same-sex couples and what I am arguing for. The rights of children generally are considered to supersede those of a donor — at least everywhere in law they do. However, I do not necessarily see it as a competition.
That does not exhaustively answer your concerns, but that is the landscape of it, as I see it.
Senator Carstairs: You have raised a very interesting possibility. Of course, I am not at all convinced that many children who think they are the child of a certain person are in fact that. We would not know that unless we completed DNA testing. Presumably, only the mothers have the ultimate knowledge of whether or not the person they are married to is the father.
I am concerned with the legal obligation of the donor. If we say that a child is entitled to know who their biological parent is, it seems to me the donor has some legal obligation to that child, whether through a potential inheritance, or paying for education or whatever the case may be.
I know your paper addresses the issue that it will not reduce the number of donors, but I suspect that long-term it will significantly reduce the number of donors.
The problem in Canada today, as well as in the United States and the U.K., is that women are having, or trying to have, children later in life, because they have careers that they want to have well-developed. Many of them find that they are 35, 37 and 38 and they cannot produce naturally. They turn to in vitro fertilization as the response to that.
What will be the reaction of the donor community, which I understand is primarily young medical students to a very large extent?
Mr. Stevens: That is not necessarily the case.
Senator Carstairs: Will they be prepared to give sperm in the quantity they give it now if they will have legal obligations sometime in the future to 50, 60 or 70 children?
Mr. Stevens: You have raised many questions. I do not believe that any man should be producing 50, 60 or 70 children. There are issues and problems with that, including consanguinity.
I am certainly part of a cohort of at least 100, or maybe 200 or 300 half-siblings. I know what the practice was; they had two or three donors who were responsible for hundreds, some even thousands. The champion stud bull in this country has produced 500,000 offspring. It is not impossible for a human male to do the same. I cannot remember who it was who used the phrase, ``the `ick' factor.'' Most of us have such a factor when we are talking about hundreds of children from one donor. It is a real possibility and not a good one.
To refer back to what you said, the idea that many people are, of course, mistaken as to their true paternity, is true; although, I have to say that physicians routinely throw around figures such as 20 or 30 per cent. I researched all the literature on the subject. In fact, whenever anyone has done real DNA analysis, the figure is less than 5 per cent. It varies across cultures and communities within a culture, but the numbers are much lower than we are told in regard to mistaken paternity, absenting adoptees.
However, even if it were at a higher level, if it is not a good thing for a child for health, identity, family or secrecy reasons to be deceived as to his parentage, it does not make it right by the fact that it is done often. It would be like saying that, yes, sadly, sometimes a child is born disabled, but that does not mean we deliberately disable a child at birth. It is the same kind of logic: just because it is true, it makes it okay.
With respect to the donors and legality, in England and other places they clearly severed, in law, the parental rights and responsibilities of sperm donors. Several provinces in this country, such as Quebec and Newfoundland, have also. I do not know about Alberta, but my own province of Ontario has not. That is necessary and it must be done. The United States, I believe, has the Sperm Donor Act. In the majority of states, sperm donors are not parents in law.
I do not know what a particular family court does in a different jurisdiction, but I would be strongly in favour that sperm donors are not fathers. As a grown man, I am not looking for a father — I had a father. The vast majority of offspring are looking for information, which is something different. That does not mean the information must be protected in law. It must be done and it has been done in most jurisdictions.
With respect to sperm donors, if something is right, it is right. I do not believe that sperm donors will disappear. Sperm donors are not all medical students; that is something that I believe the fertility clinics have propagated. They have become a handy pool for any senior physician who is doing training in fertility medicine, and, incidentally, coercive because the student wants to please the person giving him the grade. It is a dubious issue ethically. Many are not medical students; they were not where my mother was treated. Where donors have been recruited who are willing to be identifiable, they are generally older men in their 30s, who have very often had a family and are aware of what it means and aware of what they are doing. Many kids in university who are doing it for beer money are not thinking through what they are doing. It is almost as if we take the worst part of male sexuality — the ability to have sex and walk away — and make a virtue of it. Again, however, where donors have been recruited who are willing to be identifiable, as has happened in Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and in this clinic in Berkeley to which I have been referring, they are slightly more mature donors.
It is true that more women are having babies later in life, and there is a need for more intervention because fertility declines so dramatically after a median age of 35. However, it does not mean we should not put some effort into making this happen, if my argument is right. If it is right and if it is important for children to have connection, both for health and identity reasons, to find out at some point in their life who they come from, as I believe strongly it is, then those problems simply have to be addressed.
A parallel argument might be, and I do not mean to be offensive in making this parallel, that the supply of adoptable babies dried up dramatically when abortion laws were liberalized in the late 1960s. To increase the supply of adoptable babies, abortion could simply be banned, but it is recognized that having liberalized abortion laws is a social good. That is the price to pay.
I do not feel we have to pay that price with donor insemination. I just make the point that if something is good, it is good.
Senator Carstairs: If women's eggs are healthier in their 20s, so too are the male sperm. If I were to use in vitro fertilization, I would want a young donor because I would want to have healthy sperm.
Mr. Stevens: Sperm stay healthy much longer.
Senator Carstairs: A strong argument can be made that children have a right particularly to health information about the donor sperm. To use an analogy, it is important for my children to know that one of their grandfathers was a type one diabetic and that one of their grandmothers had heart failure, so they can make wise medical decisions throughout their lives.
Surely we can provide them with more of that information without taking the step of identifying the donor.
Mr. Stevens: Yes, you can. It is much easier to evade that. The practice that is currently mandated in the act is a simple snapshot: when the person donates they get his name, address or social insurance number, and they do not track him any further. The two things do go together. However, I would also argue strongly that to know who you come from is a very fundamental human need. It is a fundamental need of children and of adults. It is difficult to make this argument and refer only to children because I feel it is true for me. It is true for every organism; a one-celled organism can recognize its kin. It is one of the most basic mechanisms, if you like, that living beings have. Throughout our culture, the stories from Oedipus to Star Wars, the theme of finding one's father, for better or for worse, are there. To know our genealogy, not just as a hobby, but as a visceral and real thing, is significant to understanding who we are. We turn our back on our entire history and our development, our biology, rather arrogantly and at peril.
I am not saying we have a right to know everything because no one can provide that. However, for an agency to withhold the name of a child's biological mother or father and important information that can be crucial to that person, I believe, is a violation of his or her rights.
Perhaps that answer covered too great a ground. I feel that identity is important here. The atmosphere of secrecy and deception that exists in these families can be destructive to children.
Senator Poy: Thank you for your presentation. I find it very interesting. I would like to follow up on some of Senator Carstairs' questions.
First, we talk about identity. If donors are willing to give identity, with respect to health information, would they also give some kind of background of their ancestors' health problems? I am wondering about the jurisdictions that would give identity.
Mr. Stevens: Yes, The Sperm Bank of California — which I refer to because it remains a model — does three generations of information. Many places give personal statements and such as well. Are you talking specifically about health and genetics?
Senator Poy: Yes, at the moment.
Mr. Stevens: Yes. I do not know what the U.K. does, to tell you the truth, and health reporting information in the Canadian act is not specified. Presumably, it will be worked out in the regulations. I hope that you will push those regulations to have the absolute maximum amount of information. I believe that they should be identifiable, but if that is not possible I do not want to make the best the enemy of the good. I would like to see those regulations be broad and complete.
Senator Poy: Usually, with a name, a face and an address, the identity of the father or the mother is known, yet previous generations remain unknown. They might not reveal specific family health defects.
When it comes to donor identity, I feel it is very important for children to find out who their biological parents are. However, if, say, a medical student has donated, resulting in a large amount of offspring, would that donor really be interested in being contacted by hundreds of children in the future? I am just wondering about the reverse situation.
Mr. Stevens: I feel it probably is a pretty serious problem. My donor, who certainly did have hundreds, had the good fortune of being dead. We are very close to identifying him; we think we know who he was.
It is a huge problem, absolutely. There are a number of reasons why one should not have hundreds of children, and that would be yet another.
Senator Poy: It could be a terrible shock, especially when you are getting old, if all of a sudden all these children come out of the woodwork. You mentioned the House of Lords were worried because of inheritance of titles. I can see that happening. In certain societies, if the biological mother or father happened to be very wealthy, they would come out and start claiming. What happens then?
Mr. Stevens: In that case, there must be a legal regime where the rights and responsibilities of the donor as parent are clearly severed. They are not; they are clearly spelled out as this not being the case.
I am not a lawyer, but I do feel that, generally speaking, the courts turn to fathers. There have been cases where sperm donors have been nailed for support in family breakdown cases, but those are cases where usually a single woman or lesbian couple has gone to a friend or contracted somebody for their sperm. These people have been involved in some way with the family and the child. It is a different matter when done through a sperm bank.
I remember when the mayor of Toronto, Mel Lastman, had a paternity case. The judge threw it out saying that if we were going to do this, we would have to go after sperm donors. The courts were clear on that matter, even in the absence of a law.
Actually, a big sperm bank from Georgia, in the United States, was operating in Ontario without a law in place, with identifiable donors. They did not feel there was any precedent in the courts for any of that ever happening.
What about the other way around though? What about a guy who has become destitute and I find him, I am making an okay living and he wants money from me? The fact is that that will not happen. To make sure it does not happen, provinces in this country all have to pass the same laws as Quebec and Newfoundland.
We seem to survive very well and have done very well with the adoption system opening up. We seem to have managed that pretty well. We do not have stories of adoptees going to a wealthy guy, demanding money and suing him. Placing for adoption is very clear and it is understood by us as a society. I do not see what is so different about this; I do not understand why this issue comes up. It should be very easy to deal with legally.
Senator Poy: I come from a society where the biological parent is very important. If one can claim paternity or maternity, one has that claim equally with the other children. Then there is a problem.
Mr. Stevens: There would be a problem, but that problem is resolved if these legal safeguards are in place, as with adoption; the adoption analogy is good.
I would ask, senator, if you come from a society where that is very important, then that importance is there for a reason, culturally. I do not know, but I do not believe you would regard the importance of biological connection as silly.
Senator Poy: No.
Mr. Stevens: Being a modern woman would not mean that you would necessarily regard that as silly. I also would not regard it as silly. I regard it as having some weight. I was raised in the Church of England; I was a choirboy at Canterbury Cathedral; we were Christian. Through examination of my DNA I was certain, and confirmed through other evidence, that my sperm donor was a Jew, which is an entirely different heritage, but makes sense to me. I feel quite at home with those English Jews, to whom I discovered I am related, and in whose company I spent some time. That was a dramatic experience for me, and I can tell you, it has some weight and importance.
Senator Poy: Thank you.
Senator Munson: Thank you for coming; I appreciate it very much. I have not studied this issue extensively, and it is a learning curve today.
You used the term, ``donor-conception offspring.'' Do you know how many donor-conception offspring there are in this country?
Mr. Stevens: It is very hard to say. It is some tens of thousands — but fewer than 16,000 — per year, maybe 100,000 accumulated total in this country, and maybe more than two million worldwide. It is hard to get numbers, partly because it has been completely unregulated, but that will change with the establishment of the new agency. I really do not know.
Senator Munson: On the practical and political side, what kind of support do you have for the cause that you are espousing today? The Assisted Human Reproduction Act was passed in Parliament in 2004, and I am sure a lot of work and a lot of representation had gone into that, yet I do not believe we hear very much of what you are talking about. Maybe it is out there in the medical and human-interest pages, but it is not on the big radar screen.
Mr. Stevens: There was an article in The Globe and Mail, by Margaret Wente, on Saturday, talking about this very issue. There has been a lot about it in the media, on television, et cetera. When we first went to the Health Committee, there was a fair bit of sympathy; they paid some attention to health reporting and so forth. However, way back when they were drafting the bill in the House of Commons, we got nowhere on the issue of identifiability.
There were certainly allies among bioethicists and, in fact, increasingly among sperm banks and in fertility medicine — although, a lot of resistance there too. Also, among social workers and psychologists — I believe it is the position of the American Psychological Association, although I should be careful there, senator, because I have not looked at that recently.
Certainly, identifiability is supported by the 200 or so people, who I know, who were donor-conception offspring; it is pretty well universal. There is evidence that it is growing amongst recipient parents, among people who choose to have donor conception of one kind or another, and increasingly, identifiable donors are being offered to meet that demand.
Senator Munson: I am curious as to whether this town has political allies, groups and such to back up your argument so it can move along. There appears to be some resistance, obviously.
Mr. Stevens: Absolutely, the resistance is from the medical profession and their allies; or the folks that make products such as pharmaceuticals, because fertility medicine is basically private medicine, like cosmetic surgery. It is not, of course, the public health system; there is a fair bit of money involved in it. Tens of thousands of dollars is spent on IVF treatments, and the rate of success is low, so there is a lot at stake.
Fertility medicine, I would say, by and large, is quite resistant, with the exception of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, which is a big American organization that it attracts a lot of attention world wide. They invited me and some other people to speak; their ethics panel is now in favour of openness, and is certainly in favour of disclosure. In the past, they were dead set against parents even telling their children. They are now, across the board, in favour of disclosure.
No, there is resistance in the medical community and allies within social workers, psychologists, bioethicists and many parents.
Senator Peterson: On this disclosure matter, would it be, in your view, optional or mandatory? For example, if the donor wanted to remain anonymous, are you saying that when the child is 18 they would have an unfettered right to know?
Mr. Stevens: It is a tough question. Speaking personally, I feel uneasy about that. When I started on my own personal search, I wanted to satisfy myself that an open-donor program was possible before I began to rattle those cages.
Speaking on behalf of most of the people I know in our loose alliance, I would say a lot of people would argue for a retroactive right to know. I would argue that only donors who are willing to be identified would be recruited, so it is prospective rather than retrospective.
With respect to disclosure — the parents telling the children — it is not possible to mandate what a child does. However, it is possible to say to a citizen, like me, that the birth certificate — the first identifying document we have that represents our relationship to the state — should contain accessible, legitimate information that, upon reaching adulthood, would allow us to know from whom we come.
Senator Peterson: On these matters of health issues, do you feel that should be expanded upon, that the donor would have to make a fuller disclosure? You are saying that is a reason why you should be able to find out. Maybe that could be done at the time if they apply to be a donor.
Mr. Stevens: It could be done at the time, but if they are identifiable, then some of those problems are resolved. If they are not identifiable until the child is mature or an adult, then there needs to be some way of communicating with the donor, which is sort of alluded to in the present act. If there is a medical emergency, a doctor can appeal to the agency to find the donor. The trouble is that, although they know who he is, they do not know where the donor is. It used to be they did not know who or where he was, or have any other information.
When a male sires a human being, he is engaging in — if not in parenthood — an ongoing relationship. Therefore, he would need to be available and his health information would need to be updated.
Senator Poy: You mentioned resistance from the medical community. Can you explain why?
Mr. Stevens: Why I believe the community is resistant?
Senator Poy: Yes. Why do you believe that is so?
Mr. Stevens: There is a habit of clinical secrecy. However, the adoption world came out of the churches and later the social work profession, and there is much more a spirit of communication. The medical profession, with respect to fertility medicine, are engaged in one thing and one thing only, which is producing a healthy baby. That is the goal; everything after that is not thought about, whereas in the adoption community it is like building a family. There is a different orientation.
Fertility medicine does amazing things to produce a healthy baby. That is what they are focussed on. There is a habit of confidentiality in medicine; there is in social work too, but it is not quite the same. In medicine, to a great extent, a person becomes a file, a case.
Finally, to be blunt, fertility medicine is a business; it is a private business. It is for profit. To keep track of donors and to get involved in any kind of human interaction — even to keep a file — or to get involved in the kind of counselling that would be required to manage if it was open or identifiable, all of that costs money.
This was pointed out to me, once again, by the Sperm Bank of California. Comparing the cost of the two programs, anonymity is cheaper and it gets them off the hook if anything goes wrong.
The Chairman: Mr. Stevens, thank you for coming here this afternoon and giving us your personal case. It is always easier to understand when we see it from the perspective of someone who is living it, as opposed to those who talk about it, as is often the case of children.
The best interest of the child is frequently talked about, but children's rights have not always been in the forefront of policy making, et cetera.
You have brought us some practical suggestions that we will follow up. You have also given us a different perspective on children, that issue and the convention of identity. Not only have you talked about identity being the right to know your health situation and perhaps your parentage, but also you have given us insight on your own personal need and interest in knowing some of whom could be termed ''siblings'' in a different and unique way. This is all very different and new. We hope that we can take some time to reflect on this and translate it into better recommendations as we develop new technologies. We are responding to them and we hope we can look into the future with you on those issues.
Mr. Stevens: Do you give specific recommendations, for example about the Assisted Human Reproduction Act?
The Chairman: We are not bound by any rules in that sense. We are studying a broad issue and if we can come to some consensus, we will make recommendations. That is where we feel we are competent and can be helpful in the whole field of law or public policy that we will move forward. We will have to see how our report is done.
Certainly, comments that you made, for example the regulations under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, will be scrutinized and examined carefully. Many legislators studied the act, and we thought we had done our due diligence. We now have a point of due diligence within regulations. Many of the issues will, hopefully, see the light of day in one form or another. Thank you for the time you have taken to educate all of the senators and, through us, to the general public, by television.
Mr. Stevens: Thank you, senator. I appreciate that opportunity very much. If you get a chance to see the movie, please do.
The Chairman: We will certainly follow up with the movie.
Our next presenters are from the Canadian Labour Congress. Ms. Byers comes to me with a wealth of knowledge of her background. She was in case work when I was starting out as a judge. We both started out in Saskatchewan about the same time. I moved to other arenas and Ms. Byers has moved from Saskatchewan, where she was with the Saskatchewan Government Employees Union, and has presently secured this position as vice-president.
We were in Saskatchewan two weeks ago and met many of the old colleagues. I believe you know what field we are discussing. We are pleased that you will give us your perspective on national or international issues as you see them.
Mr. Benedict, director of the international department, accompanies you. I am afraid I do not know as much about you.
We welcome both of you and are pleased you could make this presentation, particularly with children as the Canadian Labour Congress views the issues we are studying.
Barbara Byers, Executive Vice-President, Canadian Labour Congress: Thank you, senators, for this opportunity. There was no one from the labour movement as witnesses and since we represent 3.1 million workers and their families, we felt it would be important for the Canadian Labour Congress to be here.
We will attempt, in the 10 minutes, to deal with two main issues: child care and the minimum age of employment. We hope our shortened version will incite further discussion.
Some of the responsibilities I have at the Canadian Labour Congress are as follows: workplace education, which includes training and technology, apprenticeship, and literacy; medicare, health care, child care and unemployment insurance; labour education programs; women's rights, disability rights, solidarity and pride; and the whistle-blower's protection act.
As well, I have been the Canadian worker representative to the International Labour Organization, ILO, since November 2002 and was recently re-elected as one of the 14 worker representatives on the ILO governing body. One of my responsibilities is to advance workers rights through the development of international standards, and to push for those instruments to be ratified and implemented in Canada.
Combining my previous life and my current life, I have reason to welcome this opportunity to share and discuss with you some of our views on Canada's international obligations in regard to the rights and freedoms of children. Let us turn first to the question of children in Canada.
In September 2006, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, released its report on child care and early learning. They applauded countries that have made a commitment to child care but the report indicates that Canada is not among them.
The OECD recommends that countries invest 1 per cent of GDP on child care; we fall well below that, only reaching .3 per cent. Of the 14 OECD countries surveyed, public expenditures on early childhood services are the lowest in Canada.
In 2004, only 15.5 per cent of Canadian children had access to regulated child care spaces. Yet, we know that two thirds of women with children less than three years of age are in the labour force, and 75 per cent of women, whose children are between the ages of three and five years, are in the labour force. Lack of affordable, community-based child care means that many working parents, especially women who are single parents, cannot work full time or cannot join the labour force at all.
High quality, not-for-profit, accessible child care contributes to social equality. If parents have access to good quality child care, they are more likely to stay in the labour force and have access to skills training and job ladders. This will benefit their children directly.
Quality care supports early learning for children. That is an essential first stage in a system of lifelong learning, which promotes and equalizes opportunities for all children regardless of their income or social background.
Many of the children that I worked with, both in terms of juveniles and when I was a child protection worker, would have benefited if we had an early learning and child care program for them to access. Families that have money can afford the kinds of child care and early learning that a lot of other working families cannot afford. Perhaps some of the children that ended up in Senator Andreychuk's court would not have been there if they had had other opportunities.
A comprehensive and affordable early learning and child care system is critical to the resolution of the growing tension between paid work and household responsibilities. Such a system works to eliminate the ``welfare wall'' for single parents.
We would like to see a national child care program with dedicated federal transfer payments to provinces and territories for child care capital investments. Ongoing operating funds must be ensured as well; there must be a recognition that child care spaces are about more than bricks and mortar. Capital funding without the operating funding will not work. We need a comprehensive system of early learning and early child care education.
We have called on the government to restore the multi-year federal funding to the provinces. It needs to be $5 billion over five years, based on both provincial and territorial action plans. The plans must be based on the principles of quality, universality, accessibility and development programming.
As we looked at the work of this committee, by Canada not doing what it needs to do in child care, we believe that there are clear violations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. These occur in the preamble; in Article 3; in Article 18(2) and (3); in Article 19(2); in Article 23(2); and in Article 29. You, with your expertise, may find even more violations.
Let me turn quickly to the question of the International Labour Organization.
I note that, while the report focuses on human rights and our obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and whether Canada's legislation as it applies to children meets our obligations under this convention, little or no mention is made in the report of the work done by the ILO to protect children through the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour, IPEC.
The ILO is the United Nations' agency specifically mandated to deal with issues related to labour. It is unique within the UN system because it is of a tripartite nature.
In 1998, the ILO unanimously adopted a declaration on the fundamental principles and rights at work as an expression of commitment by governments, employers and workers' organizations to uphold basic human values that are vital to our social and economic lives. The declaration covers four areas: freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining; the elimination of forced and compulsory labour; the abolition of child labour; and the elimination of discrimination in the workplace.
ILO member states are bound by the principles enshrined in the declaration. Yet, Canada still has not ratified one of the two fundamental conventions, which is the one that applies to children — Convention C138 on the minimum age of employment. The convention states that under Article 1:
Each Member for which this Convention is in force undertakes to pursue a national policy designed to ensure the effective abolition of child labour and to raise progressively the minimum age for admission to employment or work to a level consistent with the fullest physical and mental development of young persons.
Article 2(3) states that:
The minimum age specified in pursuance of paragraph 1 of this Article shall not be less than the age of completion of compulsory schooling and, in any case, shall not be less than 15 years.
I do not want to spend too much time on the content of the convention; we have appended it to our presentation.
We are not here to make a case for the existence of widespread child labour in Canada, although there are clearly some cases of unacceptable exploitation of children in this country. Senator Pearson, for example, provided shocking evidence a few years ago about the sexual exploitation of girls across the country. In addition, every year we hear of accidents in workplaces and on farms that involve children.
Instead, I want to focus on the reasons why Canada has not ratified this convention and what we consider to be some of the implications for Canada and for Canadians.
What are the barriers that prevent Canada from ratifying Convention C138? Simply put, having gone through this discussion many times, it is that the provinces will not allow the federal government to do it. As mentioned in the report, there is a ``seminal,'' to quote Professor MacKay, decision by the Supreme Court in 1937, in a split decision, that requires the federal government to get consent from the provinces in the areas of labour legislation where they have jurisdiction.
That leaves Canada in a challenging position in terms of its ability to ratify international conventions. It leaves us in the position that, many of us believe, needs to be challenged. It has been a long time since 1937.
In terms of the question of minimum age of employment, we see some jurisdictions going backwards on minimum age restrictions and on monitoring requirements for young people at work; most recently British Columbia and Alberta. However, most of the labour standards legislation across the country does not do a particularly good job of enforcing the minimum age of employment or monitoring it.
In Alberta, one of the reasons given for dropping the age was that the fast food industry was in desperate need of workers. This was seen as the solution to that problem. I point out that the restaurant industry has a huge accident rating in terms of the kinds of accidents that many young workers experience, even at 16 and 17 years of age. Article 7(1) of C138 Minimum Age Convention states that:
National laws or regulations may permit the employment or work of persons 13 to 15 years of age on light work which is —
(a) not likely to be harmful to their health or development;
I would suggest to you that restaurant work for young workers is likely to be harmful to their health.
Should this not be an issue that we would want to examine in the context of our labour market, the rights of our children and as concerned parents? What will we have next? When the oil patch needs more workers will we suggest lowering the age there? We recently found out about workers being brought in from other countries as cleaning crews in the oil patch. Someone could probably advance the argument that perhaps that is work that children could do on weekends and on school holidays. The market should not be dictating the health, safety and development of our children. Clearly, there are challenges that need to be addressed if Canada is to live up to its international commitments.
Thank you for your attention. I look forward to our discussion, to the report of the committee and to the kinds of recommendations, specifically in the areas of child care and minimum age of employment.
The Chairman: Mr. Benedict, are you here to answer questions if we direct them to you?
Mr. Benedict: Yes.
The Chairman: You pointed out some of the minimum age areas. One of the issues has always been about teaching children responsibility and that a certain amount of work for children is acceptable. When you drop the minimum age and allow children to work, safety is the issue. I was pleased that you touched on that point.
Do you have any specific comments about the farming situation? Do we still believe that the farm family is important and, therefore, how they conduct their own responsibilities is unique and, in many ways, reinforced and supported from our society. Yet, children seem to work hard on the farm. Do you still support that family farm concept?
Ms. Byers: Absolutely. Coming from Saskatchewan, I absolutely support the family farm. We also know that the question of safety on the farms is a large issue. It is not one that is recorded often because it does not fall within workers' compensation statistics.
Certainly, we know historically that young people have always worked on their own family farms, but we also know that a number of those young people are in the position of working on other farms now as well, as a way to help the crisis in their own family's income.
While we support the question of families working together in the farming industry, we know that some very young people have gone to work on area farms because they need to bring income into the family home. That should not be happening in 2006, but it is.
You mentioned responsibility. There are many ways that we can teach, mentor and show children responsibility; it does not have to be associated with work. Objections to minimum age have come from some provinces who say that they cannot agree, because some of their young people work at cadet camps and some deliver newspapers. They say that we would be taking away that kind of work. We would not be in a position to go before the International Labour Organization to talk about the oppression of Canadian children working at summer camps. That is not part of it. We are talking about children that are working as part of their life — part of their school day is working.
On a personal note, I am probably the worst person — or maybe the best person — to talk about working at an early age. I started working at the candy bar in a Saskatoon theatre when I was 14. We checked with the labour department at the time — the law has likely not changed — and my mother was told that as long as I was not taking the job away from an adult who needed full-time work that it was perfectly acceptable. I started working part time, which for me was a minimum of 35 hours a week because we had a 44-hour work week then. It taught me responsibility. I was always very proud of saying that. However, just before my mother died, we had a discussion about things that she would have done differently. She said she would not have let me work because I missed out on participating in school sports and other school programs. I worked every day after school at 4:30 and on weekends. I prefer to believe it taught me responsibility, but I believe my mother had different ideas later on.
The Chairman: That is interesting. We will have to compare notes as to whether it was the same theatre where I worked at age 15, which is gone now. I was not paid with a normal pay stub; I suddenly realized that there was a reason they paid me out of miscellaneous cash.
We added a reservation about military service, but I do not wish to address this because, I believe, we have heard about it from other witnesses. We talk about child care, but coming from the juvenile justice and child welfare approach, it would appear that we need many services from many areas to help parents. Rather than identify what the parent might need to look after the child, we need to do a better job of ensuring that children receive the kinds of responses that they required early enough to make a dramatic change in their lives. We see children needing health services; mothers needing parenting services and support systems; we hear often about autism, and so on. Most of these issues are identified at the pre-school level. Yet, if they have not received the services, we see these children in our welfare system and in our justice system. Do you have a comment from your congress position on services at early childhood and beyond child care?
Ms. Byers: On the child care issue, we have said consistently that the new system of $100 per month per child, six years of age and under, is supposed to give parents' a choice. However, they do not have a choice if there are no services and there is no child care. Specifically, children have various needs and you are absolutely correct. We need to put more money into investments in services for children. Harkening back to my previous life as a social worker in protection services or the child protection and physical abuse unit, the financial assistance workers were often our first source for information. They might tell me about a mother that was running into problems with her four-year-old or her 14-year-old. At those times, we needed to bring in someone to work prevention to help prevent a future abuse situation. Those services were cut back, and our financial assistance workers became financial administrators.
Services to children are not glitzy. They do not show that if a dollar is invested here, then the road gets built there; people cannot come to the openings of events, et cetera. We can show what we know: if we put money into services, then some kids will not end up in the system later on, either at four years old or 14, or even 40.
We are concerned. We do a lot of work on anti-poverty issues and child development issues that would say to us that we need to put more money not just into infrastructure programs, but into all sorts of programs that benefit families, because it will prevent later issue.
Senator Poy: You mentioned that, in Alberta, the age of employment for children has been lowered. To what age, first, and second, are they covered by the Workers' Compensation Board, WCB? Is there a minimum age that WCB will cover these workers?
Ms. Byers: You have me on one question. I will have to do some checking. I do not want to guess. I believe in both cases, Alberta and British Columbia, the age was lowered to 12.
Senator Poy: Is this to work anywhere, or just restaurants?
Ms. Byers: In Alberta, there was some focus on the restaurant industry. In Alberta and British Columbia, they essentially said that if you have written permission of the parent, then the child can work. In other labour legislation, for example, in Saskatchewan, there are age restrictions in the construction industry.
In terms of workers' compensation, you would have to be missing work. I know that at the older end of the spectrum, for example, if a 65-year-old person were on workers' compensation, then he or she would be cut off because it is presumed that pension plans take over. I do not know the answer offhand.
Senator Poy: If a 12-year-old child is hurt by burns in the kitchen while working in a restaurant, for example, would WCB cover that child? Does WBC have a minimum age, such as age 16 instead of age 12?
The Chairman: I believe Ms. Byers says she does not have the answer right away.
Ms. Byers: I will check and get back to you on those details.
Senator Poy: Thank you. What happens to the child who has an accident in a restaurant? Who will look after or compensate that child?
Ms. Byers: Workers' compensation programs, as you know, were brought into this country as a way to prevent workers from suing their employers when accidents occur, and the agreement was that employers would pay into a workers' compensation system and then be freed of legal suits.
I do not know. It would be very interesting to see what would be advanced. They would be covered under areas such as occupational health and safety. Roughly eight years ago, there was a program — if memory serves me correctly it was on CTV and it was called Part of the Job — about young workers killed on the job. One young man was killed at the age of 15 while working in a recycling plant. Essentially, the families had no benefits paid out to them at all.
Senator Poy: It would be interesting to have the information. Thank you.
Senator Munson: In our interim report, we talked about a children's commissioner to monitor the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and protection of children's rights in this country. Have you see seen that? Do you like the idea?
Ms. Byers: Yes. In terms of the children's commissioner, you are appealing to not only my sensibilities as a labour activist, but also as a social worker. If we had someone promoting, monitoring and calling for the enforcement of the rights of the child, then it would be a big step forward. Children get lost in this process; in all the discussions of adults, children get overlooked. These hearings are important, but how often do we have these kinds of discussions?
Senator Munson: What about Aboriginal children? They are under a different jurisdiction.
Ms. Byers: Absolutely. All children have to have rights. It does not matter in that sense. There may be special commissioners for that. Again, coming from Saskatchewan, that may be something that we need in order to get the focus on children.
Senator Munson: This report that you referred to from OECD, is only 12 days old, so it is still fresh. You talked about Canada lagging behind in this report. Can you give me any statistics on which countries of the 14 are spending more money than our 0.3 per cent of GDP, and how that money is being invested wisely for child care? We are smug in this country; we believe we are doing all the right things most of the time for children.
Ms. Byers: I do not have the whole list in front of me. We will get back to you. I am sorry.
The Chairman: In this case, we will obtain the report and circulate it to all senators. You have brought it to our attention, and those statistics should be in there.
Ms. Byers: You know how to find me if you need anything else in that regard.
Senator Munson: You also talked about Convention C138. You referred to it in your discussion with the chair about the whole issue of children. The fact is that the provinces and the federal government cannot get their acts together. How much suffering happens in this country because provinces and the federal government cannot get their acts together and come to a unified position?
Ms. Byers: That is a loaded question.
Senator Munson: I used to be a reporter. I ask loaded questions, hoping for a specific answer.
Ms. Byers: There is tremendous suffering that happens. It is not that provinces and the federal government cannot get their act together; it is because they will not get their act together. Therefore, we have young people injured on the job, some of whom may be 15 of 16 years of age. How many other young people do not even report the accidents or are told not to by their employer? Many people going into the work place, even adults, do not know their rights. If you work in a non-union environment, you do not necessarily have an advocate there. We have situations where young people may be told to take the day off with pay after an incident. The employer appears to be kind and generous, when in fact it is a way of avoiding filing a workers' compensation complaint or forms.
We had a situation, again, with slightly older workers, in Saskatchewan in 1989, and certainly there have been unfortunate incidents since then, but three young men all died in perfectly preventable accidents.
During the time we were looking at changing the labour legislation, I remember one of the mothers telling the Minister of Labour — then Robert Mitchell — that he may know what it is like to deal with legislation, but he does not know what it is like to bury his child from a preventable workplace accident.
There are situations where young people do not know to stand up for their rights. They are unaware of the rules and believe the employer is acting fairly. Most employers do not want to have someone injured on the job. If a 14- or 15- year-old person cuts his or her hand at work, he or she is instructed to go home, take a couple days off and get paid under the table.
I remember an occasion when I worked 50 hours in a week. We were busy at the theatre. My boss said to me, ``I cannot send in the documentation to head office showing that you worked 50 hours, so I will pay you extra over a number of weeks.''
How much of that happens?
Stephen Benedict, Director, International Department, Canadian Labour Congress: You say we are pretty smug in Canada. There is also a different dimension. We meet with representatives from other governments, from workers' organizations, from employers' organizations from around the world, and, like them, we are committed to fundamental principles. The question often comes: Why is it that Canada cannot ratify a simple, basic convention, which sets a minimum age of employment? We have to get into an explanation as to why provinces will not agree to it, using arguments, as Ms. Byers has pointed out, or, in the case of British Columbia, which said, ``You could file a complaint because we allow young people to work on ski slopes on weekends,'' a rather lame excuse. There is that dimension as well.
Senator Munson: Thank you.
Senator Carstairs: I certainly do not have any disagreement with anything that you had to say. Perhaps, I would like to see you include a new phrase in your presentation, and that is that young people do already have a job. Their job is to go to school and to do the very best they can while they are in school. We just had a recent edition of Maclean's that talked about the homework crisis out there, but the reality is that young people have a job. If we want to teach responsibility to young people, we must teach them that they have a responsibility to go to school, to be on time, to perform as well as they can and to produce when they are supposed to produce. That is the teaching of responsibility.
However, I want to talk about the knowledge that, I believe, children do not have when they enter the workforce. I wonder if you have any information or whether you have done any studies with respect to that. When a child enters the workforce, who gives him a piece of paper outlining his rights as an employee?
My second question has to do with children and their need to drop out of school; particularly, the Fort McMurray area of Alberta, which has the highest rate of high school dropouts in the country. Why? Why would they stay in Grade 11 when they can earn $60,000 a year by being a roughneck on an oil rig? Of course they will leave school. Children do not think long term; they think short term. If I could have made $60,000 a year in Grade 11, I might have chosen to do it too, but I could not because there was no option at that time.
I would like your comments on both of those points.
Ms. Byers: The reality is that when one goes to the workplace, there is rarely someone who says, ``Here are your rights. Here is what you can do in terms of health and safety. You have a right to know the hazards you are working with. You have a right to participate in health and safety committees and you have a right to refuse dangerous work.'' Those were rights that were started in Saskatchewan and spread across the country in terms of health and safety jurisdictions.
Young people are often blamed for accidents that occur at work. They do not know what their rights are, and when an accident happens, they are often told that they were not paying attention.
I used to go to high schools when I was president of the Federation of Labour and talk to young people about health and safety. We were not quite into the electronic age; we had slides of real accidents that had occurred to young workers, for which they were blamed.
I remember a young woman who worked in a restaurant who was told to empty the deep fryer. She was not given any instructions. She did not know there was a spigot on the bottom of the deep fryer or that there was a metal container. She saw a plastic pail and scoop, so she set it on the counter and scooped it out. When she picked up the pail to move it onto the floor, it had melted and the bottom came out and burned her legs severely.
Another young woman was changing a CO2 container — the gas that provides the fizz in your pop. I worked in the theatre for five years, and I also never knew the containers were to be chained in or that there is a specific way to change them. The container took off on this young woman, then came back and smashed her legs. A young woman in the classroom where I was conducting a presentation said, ``I believe the person you are talking about is my cousin, because that is exactly what happened to her, and she used to be athletic.''
I would like to tell you that if a person is in a unionized workplace, the shop steward is there lickety-split telling the person what his or her rights are, but we do not do a good job at that either. Many rights get overlooked in terms of labour standards, hours, what workers are paid for and such. Often young people find out, if they stand up for their rights and say to their employer, ``You did not pay me for working this statutory holiday and you are supposed to pay me this amount,'' that the employer will first of all fight it, and it will take a long time to get the money. The employer does not give them more work because they have another group of kids coming in.
In terms of the dropout rate, it is a huge enticement to people to disregard their schooling, their safety and their rights at work by saying, ``I can make $60,000 a year.'' When I started in the workplace, I was not considering pensions very much. I think about them a lot more now.
The Chairman: Other than through certain initiatives and non-governmental organizations, NGOs, has Canada as a country, over the time that you have followed it, done a reasonable job in the international arena to attempt to stop child labour? As we go offshore and have more responsibilities, as we are an outward-looking country, we are dealing in countries where our standards look pretty good to those countries where children are in sweatshops or whatever other situations. What is your comment about Canada's leadership role in that?
Ms. Byers: Mr. Benedict probably has a 10-minute dissertation on that. Personally, I do not feel that we have done the kind of job of which we are capable. A number of years ago, it was popular to be against child labour. The Canadian government was involved in that and endorsed the movement. It was referred to as one of the worst forms of child labour — as if there are good forms of child labour. Craig Kielburger was doing a lot of his work. It was popular to be opposed; people did not buy products that came from child labour.
However, we are obviously not doing the kind of job we could be, because we are still fighting the same issues.
I go to the YMCA here in Ottawa, and they have a display of items made by child labour. We run programs with schools to get children engaged in ensuring their school does not buy soccer balls made by children in other countries their age and younger.
Mr. Benedict: My sense is that Canada does good work with respect to child labour. From an international perspective, it does not do it very effectively. There are a number of programs, funded by CIDA, through the international labour program in the Ministry of Labour and through the ILO in Central America. We have only very recently discovered this work is happening.
As the Canadian Labour Congress, with funding from CIDA, we do a certain amount of work, including in Central America. However, until very recently, no one knew what the other was doing. Therefore, there are different initiatives that are not coordinated or run to build on one another. It has only been recently that we have started to improve some of that work.
There are initiatives. Yet, there is not much thought put into how to maximize and how to bring different social partners, for example, together in Canada to build on that work.
Senator Peterson: It is my understanding that companies are now making declarations that the product they manufacture was not produced in a country with child labour. Is this voluntary or monitored? Is this becoming more prevalent now?
Mr. Benedict: It is almost exclusively voluntary and, yes, it is happening more. There was a big debate at the International Labour Conference this year in June, and there is some progress being made in terms of the number of children who spend their lives working, as opposed to children who also work in addition to other responsibilities and tasks.
The labour movement has said that the measures taken to monitor companies that are producing needs to be stepped up. There are some agreements. For example, in the case of Cambodia, there is an agreement that the ILO is helping to monitor production in export processing zones, including on child labour.
Senator Munson: I was intrigued by your statement that when you go to a work place the employer rarely has a document that outlines a person's rights.
In the work that we are doing, there are no laws that will compel an employer to indicate to one who is being hired what all their rights are and whether the employer intends to live and abide by them.
Should we put in place some sort of federal law to deal with that? I found your statement very strong.
Ms. Byers: We believe that every person who goes into work, regardless of his or her age, should be given a document. We suggest it should not be prepared by the employers as certain matters might get left out by accident. There should be a document that all employees receive indicating their basic rights and who to ask if they have questions.
Again, we get back into this federal-provincial jurisdiction and whether the federal government has the right to direct anything. In part, it is a matter of raising and pushing for some of these issues to see who pushes back and why. Some of the rationale is pretty weak.
I should indicate that this whole debate on Convention C138 applies to other issues we deal with at the ILO, certainly on the Committee on Freedom of Association. They rule on case after case from Canada with respect to that. We rank fifth among the countries that file cases on freedom of association.
Regularly, the committee comes back to me as a worker representative and asks whether we could do something about changing the Canadian Constitution. I tell them I will get right on that.
The Chairman: Thank you for appearing and beginning the debate with respect to issues affecting children, particularly in reference to labour. I know we cannot cover every area.
We will be filing our report in the Senate with our eye toward the federal government to see if we can narrow this disconnect between what is happening overseas and how we implement it at home.
We know this is a federal-provincial issue. There is certainly enough information, not only from the ILO, but elsewhere. It is well-documented that every country has difficulties, whether it is because of their federal-provincial system or otherwise. Once one signs an agreement, one has to do due diligence as part of the law.
We are trying to see the federal-provincial system not as an impediment, but as a responsive series of governments to international initiatives.
Thank you for offering your perspectives. Ms. Byers, you are as eloquent and enthusiastic as you used to be in the cause of children.
Ms. Byers: We will leave you a media release from the debate that Mr. Benedict talked about on the child labour issue as well as the countries that signed under Convention C138.
The committee adjourned.