Madam Speaker, I too congratulate the minister for introducing the legislation today. It is just one more step in a lot of decisions the minister has been making over the past seven months. There have been more decisions made over the past seven months than have been made over the past seven years.
I congratulate him on his very active efforts on behalf of the people of Atlantic Canada and on behalf of the people of his province. Many of his fellow citizens in Newfoundland are not going to fish for quite a number of years and some will never fish again. For Newfoundlanders I suspect that is a sentence of death. They are giving up and losing an awful lot for the sins we have committed in the past, both ourselves and people from other parts of the world.
I see by the map that the legislation covers the nose and tail of the Grand Bank. Adjacent to it is the Flemish Cap, a very important breeding ground for cod and other groundfish.
Could the minister explain why the legislation stops short of the Flemish Cap and whether he has confidence that NAFO with the agreements he secured a month and a half ago is in a position to police that area?