I think the way you've articulated that question is precisely on the food groups within it, which we need to deal with. We need to dispel the mythology around them. Let me try with respect to disputes in the Arctic.
There are only three, and those are the three in the document I have given you that are in the Canadian Arctic. One is with respect to a line in the Lincoln Sea, and that hopefully will be resolved with geo-mapping in the near future. There's Hans Island, which we are managing as a dispute, but we're not going to go to war with Denmark, I can promise you that. So it's being managed. It's a rock, and we will deal with that.
The more interesting one is the Beaufort, of course, and clearly we have very good relations with our American friends. We look forward to the moment when we can sit down and try to resolve this, because our idea would be to have a clear map of the three disputes in the Arctic.
I'm trying to diminish the real sort of mythology around it, because one's a line in the water, one's a rock, and the other thing we're going to get to. Is this threatening our sovereignty? No.
We talked about flags being dropped on the North Pole. You know, the National Geographic puts flags on the Himalayas all the time. You don't own the Himalayas. The Americans put a flag on the moon; they don't own the moon. The Russians did a photo-op; they don't own the North Pole. Probably the Danes own the North Pole, actually, if you look at the map. I think what we have to do is try to diminish what some of these characters do, and the Russian guy was just trying to do exactly that—provoke.
You mentioned fly-bys. We have a very concerted North American air command, which takes a look at any aircraft that come near our territory. None of the aircraft in question actually did cross into Canadian territory, but we're very aware, and we watch how they manoeuvre in those areas. That's something the Department of National Defence does as part of exercising our sovereignty. So that is another example of how when we scramble jets to go up there from our northern air command, we're doing something to protect and exercise our sovereignty.
Just the combination of the questions and the sort of atmosphere around them is important, because when we go into other rooms where people are not as informed or have the depth that you have, in terms of what we do as government and as officials in protecting the interests of our country, they need to get the kind of clarity that we can give them and that you can give them. So anything we can do to give you those bullets, those bite-sized chunks, those very simple answers to complex questions, we'd be delighted to do so. In essence, the reduction of their concern for non-issues allows them to be concerned about real ones.
