Madam Speaker, I have two questions for the hon. member for Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok.
We also are not in perfect unity with the government on this bill. All of the amendments made by the member, which were done with a lot of concurrence on the fisheries committee, were excellent amendments which could have made the bill stronger.
However, we have come to the conclusion in the Conservative caucus that it is better to support this bill and have it ratified so that it becomes more of an international agreement with the other countries which are signatories to it, to at least go that far. I suspect what will happen is that we will be back here in a couple of years, which often happens with this government, making amendments to Bill C-27 when the government finds that the enforcement mechanisms will not work.
Government members will come to the House one day with a great show of pride and patriotism to bring amendments, the amendments which the member suggested and the amendments which I suggested, and will be back here to make this bill stronger and make it do what we want it to do.
We in Newfoundland have always been very concerned and alarmed that when it comes to NAFO Canada is much too soft. We accept too many violations with respect to some of the things that happen on those vessels. This is just not strong enough to do what we want to do in Newfoundland and Labrador, and indeed in all of Atlantic Canada.
Yes, we would like a much stronger bill, but we have decided to support this bill because at least it goes in the right direction.