The true North strong and free.
All English-speaking Canadians know these words
from the country's national anthem.
These words also appear at the government of Canada's website
as a sort of unofficial national motto.
The official, and perhaps less widely known motto being
A Mari Usque Ad Mare, from sea to sea.
Both of these mottos, the official and unofficial one,
include references to Canada's physical geography.
Canada does indeed reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
but it is also a country of the North,
but just how far North does Canada extend?
For most of the last century the answer to this question seemed pretty obvious,
to Canadians at least.
The boundaries of Canada, the area over which its government was sovereign
extended to the North pole.
Canadian drawn maps of the country, showed a cone
extending from the Northwest tip where Alaska and the Yukon meet,
and from the North-eastern tip of Newfoundland to the North pole.
The North-western boundary was straight as a ruler.
The North-eastern boundary was somewhat wavy,
as it had to be unless Canada was to claim a large chunk of Greenland.
These boundaries were based on what was known as the sector theory.
Arctic countries, including Canada
could claim sovereignty over all the land and water
within the sector of the Arctic,
from their North-western and North-eastern points,
reaching all the way to the North pole.
This claim appears to have been first put forward in 1907
by Canadian Senator Pascal Portier.
It was repeated about fourty years later by Lester Pearson.
At the time Canada's ambassador to Washington.
He said, a large part of the world's total Arctic area is Canadian.
It includes not only Canada's Northern mainland, but the islands,
and the frozen sea North of the mainland between the meridians
of its East and west boundaries extending all the way to the North pole.
Generations of Canadians grew up with the idea
that their Northern country had claim to, and control over the Arctic
all the way to the North pole.
And so, it has come as a bit of a surprise to many
to learn that no one else shared this idea of Canada's Arctic sovereignty.
This realization has been driven home in recent years
as a result of a spike in activities by several countries in the Arctic.
Russia, Norway, the United States, and Denmark,
as well as Canada have engaged in efforts to map the Arctic sea bed,
to establish the boundaries of the continental shelves
extending from the respective territories,
and to identify the location of such resources as oil and natural gas.
Moreover, if the Arctic ice cap continues to shrink the possibility
of ships being able to cross from the Atlantic to the Pacific
through this Northern passage maybe realized by the middle of the century.
Let's pause for a moment to think about what is at stake economically.
Although estimates vary on how much recoverable oil and gas
lie under the Arctic ocean, there is agreement that the amounts are significant,
and that they could be between ten and fifteen percent of global reserves.
In other words, it seems that there is plenty there
to provoke fights over whose it is.
Assuming that a, world prices for oil and gas increase over time, and B,
the Arctic ice cap continues to shrink,
so that these reserves are commercially exploitable.
Both of these conditions seem likely to be met,
but even if there were no undersea resources to fight over
Canada's long-standing claim to sovereignty over Arctic waters,
all the way to the North pole would be challenged.
This is because a Northern passage would be much shorter,
and therefore much less expensive for shipping nations.
For example, the shipping distance from the port of New York to Tokyo
via the Panama Canal is about eighteen thousand kilometres.
The Northern passage would shave about four thousand kilometres
off this distance,
moving goods by ship from London to Tokyo via the Suez Canal
involves the distance of about twenty one thousand kilometres.
The Northern passage to the Arctic would reduce this
to thirteen thousand kilometres.
Countries for whom maritime freedom of navigation
is vitally important because so much of their trade with the world
is transported by container ships,
and China is among these countries,
have no interest in accepting Canada's Arctic sovereignty claims.
The sector theory for Canada's sovereignty was always rather fanciful.
If you look at a map of the high Arctic,
you will see that the Arctic ocean covers a surface
about four times the size of Western Europe.
Beyond the 80th parallel there is very little land, but a lot of water.
Based on NASA satellite images, the ice camp covers
about sixty to seventy percent of this area at summer's end.
Down from eighty to ninty percent, thirty years ago,
climate change and ice cap shrinkage aside,
the point is that these are ocean waters that,
under the sector theory, are claimed by Canada for Canada.
But the UN convention on the law of the sea, to which Canada is a signatory,
recognizes the countries exclusive economic rights to the sea's resources
up to three hundred and seventy kilometres from its coast
and close to five hundred and fifty kilometres if a country can prove
that the continental shelf extending from its coastline extends that far.
But even at that,
most of the Arctic waters that Canada claims under the sector theory,
do not fall within these law of the seed boundaries.
Since the 1980s,
the Canadian government has put forward additional arguments
to support its Arctic sovereignty claims.
Among these are historic rights, and undisputed use.
The case for historic rights boils down to the argument that Canada's claim
to Arctic sovereignty is supported by international agreements,
and judgements that have not been challenged.
The agreements and judgements relied upon however,
referred to boundaries that extend to the frozen oceans,
and thus provide tenuous support at best
for Canada's more sweeping territorial claims.
Moreover, although these claims were not challenged, they were not conceited.
When the high Arctic appeared to have no value beyond the adventurism
of reaching the North pole,
there was no particular reason for other governments
to challenge claims that were only occasionally,
and always unaggressively made by the Canadian government.
The historic right argument would have been stronger
if it had been backed up by evidence of undisputed use.
Alas the reality is that until fairly recently,
the Canadian presence in the Arctic ocean
was infrequent, and half-hearted.
During the second world war American, and German submarines
cruised below the Arctic ice cap.
But no Canadian military presence existed in the waters
of the high Arctic until 1948.
When the Canadian aircraft carrier Magnificent entered Hudson Bay.
Canada's Navy did not return to the Arctic until 1970.
After the passage of American ships in the summers of 1969 and 1970
produced a nationalist outcry
over what was widely seen in Canada as a violation of Canadian sovereignty.
But what Canadians didn't realize was that no one,
not just the Americans,
accepted Canada's claim to sovereignty over these waters.
Parliament passed a flurry of laws, dealing with pollution, and fishing
in an effort to buttress Canada's claim that Arctic waters
were not international waters,
but rather internal waters under the legal control of the Canadian government.
But as prime minister Harper has taken to saying in recent years,
when it comes to Arctic sovereignty, you use it, or lose it.
And the fact of the matter is that Canada did not use it.
In other words, Canada never established enough of a military economic,
or regulatory presence in the Arctic waters
over which it claims sovereignty
to make a convincing case for undisputed use.
As Guy Killaby, a Lieutenant commander in the Canadian forces puts it,
the intention to exercise jurisdiction
is simply not the same as actually exercising jurisdiction.
The American ships that navigated through the Arctic
in the summers of 1969, 1970, and again in 1985,
led to short bursts of indignation,
and measures intended to show that Canada in fact,
maintained a presence in these waters.
But in each case, this Canadian activity soon lapsed.
The issue of who owns what part of the Arctic
has acquired urgency in recent years
due to economics, and climate change.
Rising oil and gas prices make offshore reserves in remote places
where the cost of exploration, extraction, and transportation are high,
more interesting than in the past.
And the shrinking of the polar ice cap makes this activity more feasible.
In 2007, the Norwegian state-owned petroleum company Statoil
brought on stream a natural gas field located about hundred and fifty kilometres
off Norway's Northern coast in the barren sea.
Many saw in this the future for the Arctic's economic potential.
Russia, one of the world's largest producers and exporters of oil and gas
has been busily surveying and exploring.
And on August the second, 2007,
actually planted a Russian flag on the seabed at the North pole,
claiming that it is located on the continental shelf
that extends from Russia's coastline.
The Danes have also surveyed an undersea mountain range
that extends to the North Pole
that they claim as a territorial extension of Greenland, which they control.
Canadians used to think that the only challenge to their claim
of Arctic sovereignty came from the Americans,
but they now realize that these challenges come from many quarters.
Canada's response has been to increase its military presence
in the Arctic waters,
including the construction of a deep-water port at Nanisivik,
the commissioning of several Arctic patrol ships,
and a new army training centre at Resolute Bay.
The government is also financed an ambitious geological survey of the Arctic
that includes underwater mapping
that it says supports Canada's sovereignty claims.
But all of this is probably too little too late,
and not nearly sufficient to overcome the competing claims of other nations.
Canadians may be inclined to see themselves as the victims
of the greed of other countries,
eager to capture the potential economic gains of the Arctic for themselves,
or ensure that navigation on its waters is not controlled by Canada,
or any other nation.
The truth is however that Canadian assumptions regarding sovereignty
over these waters have always been tenuous.
This fact was as much as acknowledged when in 1970,
the Canadian government withdrew from the international court of justice
has jurisdiction in matters concerning the Arctic.
The resolution of who owns and controls what in the water to the Arctic
would likely take years and is unlikely to support Canada's sovereignty claims.
That is unless the temperatures in the Arctic begin to fall.
The ice cap expands again, and both resource exploitation,
and navigation become impossible.
In which case no one will find worthwhile to challenge Canadian claims
to sovereignty as was the case for most of the last century.