Wednesday-Night

…the first principle of Arctic sovereignty is: Use it or lose it
- Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Resolute Bay, August, 2007

April 19, 2008
Race to map Arctic is about environment as much as oil: MP
MIKE DE SOUZA, Canwest News Service
Mapping the outer limits of Canada’s continental shelves in the Arctic is essential in allowing the country to control oil and mineral exploration in a responsible way, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said yesterday.[He] said he was confident scientists would finish their work on schedule by 2013, allowing Canada to stake its claim to controlling development near the North Pole.
Lunn said that under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, scientific research is the key to mapping out boundaries. He said it means that the only major question about Canada’s claims was on how far its shelves would be extended.
Jacob Verhoef, the director of Canada’s UNCLOS program, said that the government researchers were trying to work closely with its counterparts from Denmark since the two share some common interests.
February 21
(RCI) A group of 13 American and Canadian academics and former diplomats have drawn up a report in which they recommend that both their countries stop arguments about who owns the Northwest Passage and jointly manage Arctic waters. The group agreed that the question of Arctic sovereignty is a challenge for both sides, Canada regarding the region as Canadian and the U.S. not wanting its activities in the North challenged for fear it would set a bad legal precedent for straits now considered international. Former U.S. ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci says that while both sides have strong arguments, it’s no reason for them not to focus on immediate concerns like melting ice. Mr. Cellucci also notes that it’s time to plan for the shipping volume that may sail the North in 15 or 20 years. The experts have sent a list of nine recommendations to both governments, including the drafting of rules to governing the stopping of ships and on environmental, navigation and safety standards. They also call on both nations to co-operate on immigration, search and rescue and surveillance.
February 19, 2008
(National Post) Possible solution for Arctic dispute
U.S. and Canadian teams engaged in two-day ‘model negotiation’
In an extraordinary exercise in simulated diplomacy, two teams of experts on international relations and polar politics — one representing the United States and the other Canada — have completed a two-day “model negotiation” on the future of the Arctic Ocean and are now pressing the two countries to begin official talks on a host of urgent issues confronting the rapidly warming region, including the thorny question of who should control the Northwest Passage.
The mock summit, organized by University of British Columbia political scientist Michael Byers, counted Paul Cellucci, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, and Pierre Leblanc, the former commander of the Canadian military’s northern forces, among its participants.
While Mr. Cellucci himself is on record urging the U.S. to recognize Canadian control over the disputed Northwest Passage as a way to boost overall North American security, the negotiators fell short of recommending immediate American acceptance of Canada’s claims.
Divvying up the Arctic
The Peterborough Examiner, By STEPHEN HANDELMAN
It’s hard to imagine a U.S. presidential candidate this spring or fall issuing a policy paper on the Arctic. But don’t be fooled. A combustible series of events has already pushed the polar region high on the agenda of the next president in 2009.
Russia’s exercise in polar brinksmanship last summer started the clock ticking. A Russian deep-sea submersible dove below the Arctic icecap in August and planted a flag on the seabed 1,311 meters below the surface to claim rights to half the Arctic. A week later, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Nunavut to reiterate Canadian claims to sovereignty over the Northwest Passage.
Officially, the U.S. reaction to both events was measured and calm. Spokespersons repeated long-standing American contentions that the Northwest Passage was an international waterway, while noting cooly that Russian efforts were unlikely to get anywhere.
But then the Danes moved in as well, sending their vessels north to lay claim to their own Arctic patch of ice and water.
Privately, Americans were furious - and frustrated. “We haven’t really had a review of Arctic policy since 1994,” a senior official admitted at a small gathering of foreign policy insiders in New York last week.
That’s changing. A review is now underway - although presumably it will languish in some bureaucratic in-basket until inauguration day on Jan. 20, 2009.
February 13
Tussle seen over Arctic sea floor
Rich resources eyed by Canada, U.S.: scientist
(National Post) A leading U.S. government scientist says his country and Canada are on a collision course over seabed rights in the Arctic Ocean, where vast, untapped oil and gas deposits are fuelling an undersea land grab and researchers from all polar nations are racing to collect data backing their countries’ territorial claims.
September 14, 2007
Interest in and anxiety over Canadian Arctic sovereignty is growing. Over the past few weeks, billions of dollars in new federal funding has been announced for new armed ice-strengthened vessels, a deep-water port on the Northwest Passage and a military training centre in Nunavut. Canada’s projection of itself in the circumpolar international realm is changing. But what, and who, is informing this projection? Do the billions of dollars in new funding reflect or address Northern Canadians’ concerns, interests and anxieties? With regard to the Arctic, what is the best way to “use it”, and avoid “losing it”?
Such questions were the focus of a discussion convened in October 2006 by the Gordon Foundation. A 2-day workshop focused on renewing the northern dimension of Canada’s foreign policy, prompted by the new window of opportunity opening up at the federal level, the territorial governments’ emerging collective interest in Arctic international affairs, and a concern that Canada was falling away from the leadership role it once had in circumpolar affairs.
We brought together a diverse group of 24 thinkers, including Arctic Indigenous Peoples, territorial government officials, policy practitioners, academics, industry and others, with the goal of developing practical short-term recommendations in advance of the most recent Arctic Council Ministerial meeting, as well as practical medium-term recommendations that link northern, domestic and foreign priorities.