CREDIT: Associated Press File Photo Falun Gong members' organs are harvested, says a report.

OTTAWA -- Canada and other democratic countries should boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics if China does not stop harvesting organs from dissidents, say a former Liberal cabinet minister and a prominent rabbi.

"We're going to use whatever bully pulpit we have -- spiritual, moral or political -- to cease this horrible practice, including calling for a boycott of the Olympics in 2008 if there is no progress on this issue," Rabbi Reuven Bulka told the World Congress of Cardio-Thoracic Surgeons during a panel discussion on organ donation Sunday.

Rabbi Bulka is a member of the Canadian Council for Donation and Transplantation, which advises deputy ministers of health.

"This will have to happen at a governmental level. If this doesn't stop, we're not going to send a team. And if enough countries don't send a team, then maybe there won't be an Olympics. And that is the ultimate threat," he said.

Bulka's controversial remarks come just days after similar remarks were made in Australia by former Liberal cabinet minister David Kilgour, who is visiting Australia and New Zealand to call for an international investigation into the alleged harvesting of Falun Gong organs for sale and to publicize his recent report into those allegations.

"We have not called for a boycott in our recommendations, but if it doesn't stop very, very quickly I would hope a lot of countries, including Australia, would call for a boycott of the Olympic Games in Beijing," Kilgour told reporters.

Kilgour, who also sat as an independent member of Parliament, said last week in Australia that the upcoming Beijing Olympics are a "window of opportunity" to force China to discuss the killings of dissidents for organs.

The Conservative government said last week it planned to investigate allegations in the Kilgour report, while China denied the allegations and denounced the report.

Kilgour was invited to Australia and New Zealand by Falun Gong groups in that region. He is accompanied by Edward McMillan-Scott, the vice-president of the European Parliament. They are trying to encourage support for an international inquiry into organ harvesting and the sale of body parts from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience.

Kilgour's report, released last month and prepared with international human rights lawyer David Matas, was conducted following a request by Falun Gong groups to look into the matter. The report alleges that the Chinese have been putting to death "a large but unknown number of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience" since 1999 and selling their organs -- hearts, kidneys, livers, corneas -- at high prices to foreigners.

The information in the report is largely circumstantial. While it does not provide conclusive proof that dissidents' organs are being harvested, it documents a troubling and unexplained rise in organ transplants and the sale of organs to foreigners.

The report estimates 41,500 organs were transplanted in China between 2000 and 2005, and it questions where these organs came from. In China, family donors or non-family brain-dead donors account for less than one per cent of donations, and there is no national voluntary donor program. Since the persecution of Falun Gong began in 1999, there has been a tripling of kidney transplants, while liver transplants increased from 135 in 1998 to over 4,000 in 2005.