Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is going to support the bill. The minister just returned from a meeting of the ministers of fisheries of the North Atlantic. Countries like Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Russia all state that one of the biggest concerns they have about fish stocks is the increasing, ballooning mammal population in their respective domains. Already here in Canada we know the problems we are going through with the seal hunt off Newfoundland and Labrador.
I just wonder how the minister is going to explain, first, how this piece of legislation is going to give protection to the people who have to prosecute the seal hunt, and second, if the seal hunt is wiped out because of such legislation and in regard to the support this will give groups that are against seal hunts, what is going to happen to, number one, the imbalance in our oceans, and number two, to the fish stocks around our shores and those of similar countries?