OTTAWA, March 27, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Sources in the Canadian Parliament have informed LifeSite that the Liberal Government intends to push through the controversial Assisted Human Reproduction Act, Bill C-13, on Wednesday. The entire bill was nearly defeated yesterday after the passage of MP Paul Szabo’s motion banning all human cloning. The government received a vote of only 120-94 to submit the bill as amended for third and final reading, but that is not the whole story. Most opposition members voted against proceeding with the amended legislation as did several members of the Liberal majority. However, the opposition numbers were significantly lower than they should have been at the time of this last vote of the day on C-13. Over 20 Canadian Alliance members had earlier departed the House chamber after they were led to believe that a deal was made to pair with an equal number of Liberal Party members so that their opposing votes would cancel out. Just after the cloning vote, the approximately 26 Canadian Alliance MPs left the House chamber. However, the Liberal members who had agreed to the deal reneged and stayed in the House for subsequent votes, including the final vote to send the bill to Third Reading.
Several motions which could have further improved the bill consequently lost critical votes. One of those motions was Jason Kenney’s Motion 17 which would have banned all destructive embryo research. The vote on that critical motion came right after the successful passage of Paul Szabo’s motion to ban all cloning and the accompanying departure from the House of the 26 duped Alliance members.