Regulating the Genetic Revolution: What Is and Isn’t Happening in Canada

In Canada, as in many countries throughout the world, the recent rapid advances occurring in the field of genetics have created a tremendous amount of public interest. Rarely a day goes by without a genetics story appearing in the popular press. This almost constant media coverage has been accompanied by an intensifying call for more regulatory oversight of genetics and new reproductive technologies. However, despite over a decade of almost policy discussions and a significant amount of public debate, Canada has few laws that have been specifically crafted to meet the unique social, legal and ethical challenges associated with the “genetic revolution”. In this paper, I will briefly review the regulatory environment in Canada, a number of the existing relevant laws, policies and regulations and make some tentative predictions for the future.2 This piece is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of the relevant law and regulations. There are numerous areas of Canadian law which are clearly important to the fields of genetics and reproductive technology but will not be discussed in this paper, including patent law, informed consent law, insurance law and the emerging provincial privacy laws. The goal of this short piece is merely to give the reader a sense of how Canada has, and has not, regulated in this dynamic area.