Yes, indeed, and I was pretty short in my statement at the beginning on this, but this is really one of the major success stories of the Law of the Sea convention, and also in the foresight that Canada had put into it many, many years ago.
In a nutshell, coastal states have the right to extend their exploitation of resources on the seabed to what is called the foot of the slope of the continental shelf. It sounds simple, but it's horribly complicated, from both a scientific and an analytical point of view. We have spent the past four years mapping the Canadian continental shelf on the east coast and in the Arctic. The east coast is a much easier endeavour, given that the ice conditions are pretty well non-existent and we have a much greater season. We have almost completed the work on the east coast.
In the Arctic we have spent some considerable amount of time, and this is a case of working with our American colleagues and using vessels from other countries, too, to map the continental shelf. We have a commitment to complete our work by December 2013. By the time we're finished, the land mass equivalent will be that of the three prairie provinces in terms of the extension, with, as you can imagine, extraordinary hydrocarbon potential and the like. Whether we can actually harvest that in the near term is debatable, but we are planning for 100 and 200 and 300 years from now to ensure that Canadians have their right to the continental shelf. We will submit in 2013, and hopefully we will have a result in the near future on that.