Mr. Speaker, the hon. member knows that the passage of the oceans act, which concentrated and focused on conservation and the environment, made possible the marine protected areas issue.
To that end and before the passage of the bill, I met with Heritage Canada officials and spent a day with them discussing this issue, along with consultation with many fishermen in eastern Canada.
As a result of that, about a month ago I made an announcement with the hon. Minister of Canadian Heritage which allowed for a marine protected area on the east coast of Canada as a test case so that we can develop policy and have a look at the evaluation criteria to make sure this system will work.
I am sure the hon. member would also be interested that with respect to the specific issue of the gully I have been in conversation with the World Wildlife Fund in the last week. I am sure that once the policies are developed we will be looking at this as one of our priority issues.