The Donor Conceived Alliance of Canada brings together donor-conceived people (DCP) and allies to advocate for the best interests of DCP in Canada and abroad. We advocate for policies and regulations that prioritize the welfare of donor-conceived people.
Learn more about us by reading our F.A.Q.
L’Association canadienne des personnes conçues par don de gamètes rassemble les personnes conçues par don de gamètes (PCDG) et leurs alliés afin de défendre les droits et les intérêts des PCDG au Canada et ailleurs. Nous défendons des politiques et des réglementations qui priorisent le bien-être des personnes conçues par don de gamètes.
Pour en savoir plus sur nous, visitez notre F.A.Q.
Media Coverage
CBC – Proposal to pay sperm and egg donors, surrogates spawns controversy (Nov 2018)
Ottawa Citizen – Donor-conceived group says fertility regulations do not go far enough (June 2019)
The Globe and Mail – Sperm, eggs, donors, parents – but don’t forget about the children (July 2019)
Last year, a number of offspring formed the Donor Conceived Alliance of Canada (DCAC) in response to public Health Canada consultations about updates to the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act.
Founding member Kevin Martin testified in front of the committee, but said the original list of stakeholders for the hearings didn’t include donor-conceived offspring at all. And when the government passed three new regulations to the act late last month, all of them concerned parents, surrogates and egg or sperm donors, not the children.
Those changes were necessary, as many of the current rules, especially around payment, are confusing or unenforced. But Mr. Martin is unhappy that so far, the government seems impervious to DCAC’s desire for easy access to information about genetic heritage. The group wants Canada to list the details of donor conception on birth certificates and to end its policy of destroying donation records a decade after conception.
Over all, it wants to ban donor anonymity altogether. That became law in the Australian state of Victoria in 2017, after a cancer patient argued that she wanted to inform relatives of their genetic risk – and that she had the right to meet her biological father before she died.
DCAC also wants a limit on the number of conceptions allowed from a single donor, which isn’t the case here or in the United States. One Canadian donor has learned that he may have fathered as many as 100 children after years of donating at multiple clinics.
Cape Breton Post – Trying to unknot a long-held family secret: ‘I would like to understand my genetic makeup’ (July 2019)
Ottawa Citizen – Canada lags in laws protecting the donor-conceived, advocacy group says (Aug 2019)
CBC Radio – How a Toronto woman discovered she has up to 600 half-siblings (September 2020)
