Bill Curry
Ottawa — From Friday's Globe and Mail
Report arguing disputed national boundaries due to UN authority by 2013
In the dark icy waters off Canada’s most northerly island coasts, a small yellow submarine called Discovery and a team of researchers in helicopters are busily building the case for drawing a new line, a line Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon calls the “last border of Canada”.
Although the work takes place in one of the most remote locations on earth, the researchers are not alone. Americans, Norwegians, Danes and Russians are all rushing to do the same. Canada has until 2013 to submit its research to a United Nations body that reports on the legitimacy of international border claims.
The high-stakes race has long-term financial implications as the melting arctic opens up to resource development and new shipping routes.
Mr. Cannon took a derisive swipe Thursday at reports that Russia intends to drop paratroopers on the North Pole in an attempt to establish a presence there.
“I don’t take this Russian initiative very seriously,” Mr. Cannon said in Ottawa after touring Canada’s arctic research projects on Borden Island earlier this week. “It was interesting, the contrast, to see our Canadians working extremely hard to collect the data… and on the other hand, we have the Russians that were playing games as to who can plant a flag or who can send paratroopers there. I thought the contrast was striking. We take our job seriously and it seemed to me that the Russians were just pulling stunts”.
The Canadian researchers are attempting to determine the extent of Canada’s continental shelf – the underwater portion of its landmass. The International Law of the Sea grants states sovereignty over resources that are within 200 nautical miles of their coasts. Countries like Canada that want to argue their continental shelf – and thus their sovereignty – extends further than that must submit a scientific case for this to the UN.
“Now at some point in the future, there will be another line on the map of Canada showing the outer limits of the extended continental shelf,” said Mr. Cannon. “The staff of the Borden Island camp are among those who will have helped to put that line on the map, helped to define the last border of Canada”.
It is not clear when the arctic boundaries will be sorted out, because the arctic states have different reporting deadlines, and overlapping claims will come down to negotiations between the two sides.
Russia’s Ambassador to Canada, Georgiy Mamedov, struck a more diplomatic tone after Mr. Cannon’s remarks.
“You guys are sending planes all over [the] Baltics near our borders and we never raised a tempest, a glass of water, over that,” he told CTV’s Power Play. He said all five arctic nations are on the same page in terms of sovereignty issues.
“Which means no more provocations, no more outcries,” he said. “Let’s cooperate and we are waiting for your minister, Mr. Cannon, to come to Moscow in two weeks and to discuss co-operation in Arctic as well as other areas of the world”.
University of Calgary professor Rob Huebert, an arctic sovereignty expert with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, said the research happening now could prove very significant if oil and gas deposits are ever found.
“One of the real challenges of understanding exactly what is up there is there has been such limited science in terms of any real, meaningful geological studies,” he said. “As a result, we don’t know what the stakes really are in terms of battling with our neighbours”.
The Globe and Mail
