Mr. Speaker, a lot of the member's concerns are my concerns, as we are neighbours both by land and by sea.
With regard to one of the comments about sealing, I would like to point out that in haste I think what happened in Europe was that members of the European Parliament rushed ahead with what they thought was an issue winner for all of them. They wanted to be more relevant in the eyes of Europeans. I think in some cases the voter turnout for a member of the European Parliament averages less than 10%. They just wanted to be relevant and they rushed ahead with this, overriding some of the suggestions made by the experts in Brussels.
Speaking of Europe, my colleague spent a lot of time on the issue of what concerns us off the coast. Of course we have the co-management regime on the high seas outside of our 200-mile limit. All international agreements were supposed to be brought to the House for vetting and voting, as was said by the minister originally. That story sort of changed because we did have a vote. We turned down the amendments to the current agreement of these countries on the high seas and then we found that the next day the government ratified.
I would like my colleague to comment on the seriousness of allowing some of these agreements in the House but yet not so serious.