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Health Canada has made just two attempts to enforce its controversial fertility law since early 2014, mildly rebuking someone who posted bus-shelter ads to hire a surrogate mother, and a company allegedly paying women to donate eggs, internal documents indicate.

Both actions would violate criminal bans in the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, but neither alleged offender was ever prosecuted, the emails and cease-and-desist letters obtained by the National Post under access-to-information legislation indicate.

And they were the lone infractions the department investigated in 2014 and much of 2015, both prompted by complaints from the public.

The documents are more evidence that Health Canada has taken a laissez-faire attitude – or worse – to its own law, critics said Wednesday.

The government is not just turning a blind eye to breaches of the legislation, charged Francoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University.

“These letters — coupled with the failure to investigate and, as appropriate, prosecute — provide shameful evidence of complicity with illegal activity.”

It is telling that someone would even dare to put up a public ad for...