Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for those kind comments. I too also appreciate his thoughtful and responsible contributions to debate in the House.
I will take his second question first. The New Democratic caucus believes that ecological integrity should be the foremost priority in marine protected area management. I know that there are competing interests in this area, but we believe that the highest and most profoundly important value should be ecological integrity. That is why we take quite an uncompromising position when it comes to that. That is why, while I give the government a lot of credit for taking this step in this legislation, I think this one gap of not having no-take areas is a significant omission.
With respect to my colleague's first question, I would answer yes, I agree that the interim measure he talked about is important, and I am glad to see it in this legislation. It gives us some breathing time to freeze the status quo before we can designate more marine protected areas and achieve the objectives of this legislation.