Arctic sovereignty stunts unwanted, northerners say
Last Updated: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 | 9:41 AM CT
CBC News
Canada should avoid grandstanding in the name of Arctic sovereignty, says the mayor of the Nunavut hamlet that will be next to a new military deep-sea port.
Arctic Bay Mayor Darlene Willie said she is well aware of Russia's attempt earlier this month to stake claim to the Arctic region, when it planted the Russian flag on the ocean floor at the North Pole.
Willie said she hopes Canada will avoid such publicity stunts in its bid to defend its northern borders, as well as to stake more of a claim to the Arctic.
"I'm not sure if that's going to be productive," she said after Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in the area to announce a Canadian Forces deep-sea port would be located at a former mine site in nearby Nanisivik.
Her sentiment was echoed by Ken Redmond, an engineer who has worked in the North for the past 40 years.
"I think it's kind of silly myself," said Redmond, who is currently working in Arctic Bay. "It's just flying in the face of reason. And it's irritating, to say the least."
While visiting Arctic Bay on Friday for the Nanisivik announcement, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said his government is committed to claiming part of the resource-rich Arctic seabed, as other countries have been working to do.
Nations that have land within the Arctic Circle have rights to a 370-kilometre (200 nautical mile) economic zone beyond their coasts, but they can file a claim to extend that boundary under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. To do that, however, those countries have to supply strong scientific data showing their continental shelves extend beyond that limit.
In an interview last month with CBC News, Canadian legal expert Michael Byers said this country is not moving quickly enough to gather the extensive scientific data needed to make that claim by its deadline of 2013.
Byers, the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, applauded Canada's effort to map the underwater Lomonosov Ridge off northern Ellesmere Island and Greenland. At the same time, he said Canada hasn't done enough work on other areas extending west to the Beaufort Sea and up to the North Pole.
Those concerns have not fallen on deaf ears, O'Connor said.
"We're committed to supporting the North and our sovereignty, and I think you're going to find that over time that that's going to speed up and get more involved," he said.
At stake is access to an area as large as the Prairie provinces that could be abundant in natural resources such as oil and gas.
