Mr. Speaker, I also appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-42. It is one of those times that we stand up in the House and say that it is about time.
The Madrid protocol, which Canada agreed to in 1991, is basically the reason this bill is before the House. However, as in so many other cases, it has taken us a full decade to bring forward supporting legislation for commitments that we made at the international level. It is all too typical of the government in the way it has avoided its responsibility to the various countries on this planet in terms of meeting our responsibilities. Again I repeat, it is about time.
Having said that, I want to address a couple of points with regard to the Madrid protocol and this legislation. I would indicate that the NDP is prepared in principle to support the bill. It is one that in its overall context and direction we do support.
The bill has encompassed to some degree the protocol but I do have some reservations and I want to mention those. It does address the protocol in the sense that the protocol had various principles that underpinned that agreement at the international level. It was making sure that the Antarctic would never be militarized and that neither nuclear weapons nor reactors would ever be placed there. It has a number of provisions in it which encourage further scientific research in the area to identify the ecosystem in many respects and hopefully ways of being able to identify needs that we and the rest of the planet may be able to maintain.
It was interesting to listen to the Alliance's attack on the government with regard to how Kyoto will be a disaster, according to them. The Antarctic, as is our Arctic, is the first victim of the global warming that we are seeing. I remember about a year ago there was a huge chunk that separated off the ice patch there that was larger than Newfoundland. It has completely broken up and is no longer part of that continent. Therefore, we badly need Kyoto in place as quickly as possible to forestall further damage like that to the Antarctic.
Going back to this bill specifically, the final point I would mention in terms of one of the underlying principles of the Madrid protocol is that all countries that signed on to the protocol would, in effect, abandon sovereignty claims. Not all countries have and so there is still an issue in that regard, but it certainly behooves Canada to take part in this.
Once the bill goes to committee we will have a greater opportunity to explore this but I do want to raise a couple of cautions. There are concerns about whether the bill goes far enough to implement the Madrid protocol and protect the Antarctic. I just want to mention a couple of sections. One is clause 5.
I am not sure how one would ultimately interpret this, but clause 5 of the bill as printed and presented to the House leaves open the possibility of the military having access to the sites. In fact, it specifically says that the bill would not apply to the Canadian military. I do not understand that and we will have to explore that.
The other one is that the prohibition in clause 7 prevents a number of activities but specifically allows commercial fishing. That is a great concern to us in Canada given the devastation that we have seen to some of our fishing stock when it is uncontrolled, as it would be in the sense that there are no controls in this legislation in that regard.