Ms Sara Cohen:

I will answer to the best of my knowledge. The statistics in Canada are not wonderful and I pointed out some of those numbers in my brief. I do not think a large percentage of Canadians travel for surrogacy because domestically they have a good system. We have free healthcare and excellent medical systems for many reasons we have talked about.

When I speak with people travelling for surrogacy, they come to me with potentially three different destinations in mind. One is the United States. That is for clients who are so wealthy their last name is famous in Canada. Surrogacy in the United States is expensive and some people prefer to pay a surrogate and you cannot do that in Canada. You are only able to reimburse them for expenses. The other places I see people travel to included, formerly, Ukraine. It was just about price differences. People thought, maybe correctly, that it would be less expensive to engage in surrogacy in places like Ukraine. Finally, as the Senator is probably aware, surrogacy in India used to be booming. I was not involved with that but it is open for people who are Indian citizens, so once in a while I see that, but I do not see other Canadians going elsewhere at all.