There have been recent media reports that surrogacy services are booming in Canada.
Surrogacy is an arrangement for a woman to agree to become pregnant and give birth to another person or couple.
But not only Canadians are seeking surrogate services.
Most of these needs seem to come from foreigners who want to be parents, such as Norway.
For many couples and individuals who do not have children, including gay men, surrogacy may be one of the only ways to have genetic-related children.
Why are foreign surrogacy increasing in Canada?
Foreign and domestic parents may go to Canada to look for surrogate services for many reasons.
Countries of previously popular destinations now restrict surrogacy services.
India, for example, recently banned foreign couples from accessing surrogacy services.
Mexico bans the same.
Sexual partners enjoy surrogate services.
Therefore, the intention of parents to move to jurisdictions such as Canada where access to non-
Residents and others
Sexual partners are not restricted.
But is surrogacy really rising?
The truth is, we don't know.
How many children are born every year in Canada through surrogacy?
How many of these children live in foreign countries?
To what extent are women paid as agents?
What proportion of surrogacy arrangements are traditional surrogacy (
The place where the agent's woman provides eggs)
Surrogate Pregnancy (
If there is no genetic relationship between the surrogate and the resulting child)?
How often do women act as agents?
These are important questions, but Canada has not followed all surrogacy arrangements, so we do not know the answer. We should.
We need to strengthen the regulation of surrogacy in Canada to better protect and promote the interests of women who act as surrogacy, intended parents and the resulting children.
The federal and provincial governments can take three steps.
First, the federal government must identify the costs that women who act as agents can seek reimbursement.
In fact, the law on assisted human reproduction prohibits commercial surrogacy arrangements.
It does this by prohibiting payment to women as agents.
However, the act does provide that the expected parents can repay certain costs associated with a woman's surrogacy.
The Act provides that these costs will be set out in detail in the regulations.
Unfortunately, these regulations have not been drafted and this provision has not come into force (
Although promulgated in 2004).
Therefore, interested parents and women acting as agents are in gray areas in terms of costs.
Second, family law needs to be updated to reflect the use of agents in the familybuilding.
In some provinces, family legislation does not provide for parental relations rules for women as agents.
Parental status is important for several reasons, including the identification of pedigree and citizenship, as well as making health care and other decisions regarding the child.
If the law is out of date, it is uncertain who the legal parents of the child are, and the expected parents and agents must take additional legal steps to recognize their parental status.
Finally, accurate data is critical to understanding current practice of surrogacy.
We do not have data on the number of children born by traditional surrogacy arrangements, nor on the number of times women act as surrogacy, the number of babies born by foreign agents commissioned by Canadians, or data on the number of foreign intended parents entrusted to Canadian agents.
There is limited data on pregnancy surrogacy in Canada, but it is difficult to obtain because All requests must be approvedby-case basis.
Lack of independent data validation, voluntary reports from individual fertility clinics that rely on patients to provide information on birth outcomes, and data omissions (e. g.
Age of surrogacy)
It's hard for us to know who the surrogate is and to understand the health risks she may face.
Health Canada shall, in collaboration with the provincial government, maternity clinics and other stakeholders, collect relevant data on surrogate practices and outcomes and produce such data (
Name and identity protected)
Access and Dissemination in a format understandable to the Canadian public.
Vanessa Gruben is an associate professor at the University of Ottawa and a member of the Center for Health Law, Policy and Ethics.
Pamela White is an expert assistant lecturer at the University of Kent Law School. K.