Canada's Arctic Entitlements
Ownership over Canada's Northwest Passage is proving to be a difficult issue between Canada and the United States. Most Arctic-nation countries, in fact, give short shrift to Canada's claim of the passage as being within the country's internal waters. Outside Canada the Northwest Passage is considered to be an international strait, with right of passage to all maritime nations.
Canada continues to differ in that interpretation, claiming for herself what has always been hers to govern.
And no previous Canadian government seems to have been so beleaguered, nor as much involved with the issue as the current one, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If he is successfully in finally persuading the international community, and particularly the Arctic nations - Russia, Norway, Denmark and the United States, to acknowledge Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, that would be quite the legacy.
Troublesome enough that Canada has delicate Arctic sovereignty relations with countries like Denmark and Norway, let alone the United States, her closest neighbour.
It is Canada's relationship with a truculent Russia, eager and anxious to claim for itself as much of the Arctic as possible under the UN's Convention of the Law of the Sea, for all the valuable mineral and mining rights, including undersea exploration for oil and gas properties that claims most of that country's focus.
Russia's claims and its hardball execution of some fairly impressive sorties into the area, from flag-planting to bomber expeditions, to suggestive ownership rights and territorial imperatives have Canada on edge. Still, it is Canada's relationship vis a vis Arctic claims with the United States that forms the most challenging of these claims.
And while, in the interests of self-availment, countries like Norway and Denmark have taken steps to beef up their maritime fleet, Canada still has not quite closed the gap on what it intends and what it will accomplish in the same arena.
looking northeast, up Otto Fiord, northwest Ellesmere Island. A glacier at the end of the fiord has calved icebergs, many of which are stranded in the shallow fiord. July, 1987.
Canada continues to differ in that interpretation, claiming for herself what has always been hers to govern.
And no previous Canadian government seems to have been so beleaguered, nor as much involved with the issue as the current one, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If he is successfully in finally persuading the international community, and particularly the Arctic nations - Russia, Norway, Denmark and the United States, to acknowledge Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic, that would be quite the legacy.
Troublesome enough that Canada has delicate Arctic sovereignty relations with countries like Denmark and Norway, let alone the United States, her closest neighbour.
It is Canada's relationship with a truculent Russia, eager and anxious to claim for itself as much of the Arctic as possible under the UN's Convention of the Law of the Sea, for all the valuable mineral and mining rights, including undersea exploration for oil and gas properties that claims most of that country's focus.
Russia's claims and its hardball execution of some fairly impressive sorties into the area, from flag-planting to bomber expeditions, to suggestive ownership rights and territorial imperatives have Canada on edge. Still, it is Canada's relationship vis a vis Arctic claims with the United States that forms the most challenging of these claims.
And while, in the interests of self-availment, countries like Norway and Denmark have taken steps to beef up their maritime fleet, Canada still has not quite closed the gap on what it intends and what it will accomplish in the same arena.
looking northeast, up Otto Fiord, northwest Ellesmere Island. A glacier at the end of the fiord has calved icebergs, many of which are stranded in the shallow fiord. July, 1987.Labels: Canada, Environment, Nature
posted by Pieface @ 7:43 PM
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