On Monday, April 19, the Canadian Senate Human Rights Committee unanimously passed legislation to combat international trafficking in human organs.
Senate Bill S-204, sponsored by Senator Salma Ataullahjan, makes it illegal for Canadians to obtain organs abroad without the consent of the donor, and prevents those involved in forced organ harvesting from entering Canada.
Ataullahjan had introduced a similar bill in the last Parliament, which was passed unanimously by both the House and Senate. The bill did not end up becoming law before the latest round of amendments proposed by MPs was approved by the Senate, coinciding with the 2019 general election and the dissolution of Parliament.
Canadians overseas for organ transplants 3,600 cases per year
Otragian told a Senate committee April 19, “We know that Canadians continue to travel abroad for commercial organ transplants.”
He said, “According to reports from doctors at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, three to five people a year continue to receive organs abroad. This is just one of those hospitals. The number of organ transplants performed by Canadians abroad each year, multiplied by a conservative number of patients per hospital times 1,200 hospitals, equals 3,600 cases.”
He said organ trafficking cases occur all over the world, including Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, North Africa and other regions.
David Kilgour, former director of Canada’s Asia-Pacific Division, has extensively investigated the Chinese Communist government’s live organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners, Uighurs and others. He told the commission that China is the only country in the world whose government is involved in forcibly harvesting the organs of members of persecuted groups, rather than criminals doing it on the black market.
“They don’t just take a kidney, they take the heart, the liver, the lungs – they take all the organs, and the person whose organs are removed dies in the process.”
Chogao said Canada was influenced by this, with brokers traveling to hospitals in Canada and other countries to find patients in need of organs and then arranging for the patients to travel to China for organ transplants for a large sum of money.
In his testimony, Chogao said, “In China, patients undergo blood tests and tissue tests, then surgeons go into a computer database and find a match for the patient, and then some poor man or woman who can match is taken away and has his or her organs removed and killed at the same time.”
In 2006, Qiao Gao and David Matas, a prominent Canadian human rights lawyer, first systematically investigated the Chinese Communist regime’s harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners. They also said that the CCP’s live organ harvesting has now been expanded to include Uighurs.
10 Countries Have Legislated
Jogao said he and the Metas lawyers have traveled to many countries to present their findings and said it is “embarrassing” that their own country, Canada, does not yet have legislation to address the issue, while 10 other countries do. He said, “This is something that is very educational for us and would be very helpful for other countries as well.”
Senator Ortagian said, “This is legislation we should have had 10 years ago, and we’re really behind.” “If legislation is not implemented to prohibit Canadians from participating in organ transplants, the number of tourist transplanted organs will continue to grow.”
After all of the committee’s senators agreed to the bill, committee chair Sen. Wanda Thomas Bernard said it was the fastest line-by-line approval process she had ever experienced. She said, “We all agreed to it. I don’t think we have any objections.”
Next, the bill will go to third reading in the Senate.
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