Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for being here, Doctor. I remember you came out to CFC a couple of years ago when I was there as a staff officer. Thank you for being here today.
We, of course, have some gentle disagreements with our friends in the Arctic. I was just in Stockholm at the Arctic conference as well and found it quite interesting. The Americans didn't show up for that one, but hopefully they'll show up to Reykjavik.
With the U.S., as you know, it's the border area of the Beaufort Sea, which is an interesting case. With the Russians, of course, there is the shelf. You also mentioned Hans Island earlier, which may be a smaller issue but it's still an issue. So we have three, in particular, territorial disagreements on that. I'm going to ask you to comment on some of those and to give us your views and thoughts on how we go forward to resolving them, although there are some dispute mechanisms currently running through the UN and so forth.
It's interesting that China—and this was brought up there—is asking for observer status at the Arctic Council. You commented earlier about it definitely wanting to be a player in the Arctic when it's in fact not an Arctic nation. How do you see that playing out, especially since we are working with it more closely on trade? As Mr. Chisu pointed out earlier, the Northwest Passage is in our territorial waters. What are the challenges we might face, in fact, in enforcing our territorial sovereignty over that key passage?
Could you comment, sir?