It's an interesting question from a foreign policy standpoint because there are a lot of domestic aspects to the question you're posing. Certainly, we've done it in terms of maritime protected areas, national parks, and environmental regulations more generally. I'm not even sure how to approach that question.
From a foreign policy standpoint, we have made moves toward Lancaster Sound to be recognized internationally as a unique and special ecosystem. That's very progressive on Canada's part.
I think we might look at trends in Antarctica and some interesting developments in recent weeks, with China stridently opposing, at the last possible minute, the creation of green protected areas off the coast of Antarctica, and then Russia doing a 180-degree turn and all of a sudden finding itself backing China, to say that it wasn't going to proceed forward. We all understand how much preparatory work goes into getting agreements over areas like that in place, and for China to come in and basically veto it at the 11th hour and 59th minute is very disconcerting.
I think we're going to face big challenges in terms of getting international buy-in to carve out marine protected areas and the like, and this relates to the reality that the Arctic Ocean is fundamentally different from Antarctica. Antarctica is a continent. It's a land mass surrounded by water, and the Arctic Ocean is an ocean surrounded by nation states, with sovereignty and sovereign rights to parts of that sea basin. In this particular case, a lot of the instrumentation—a lot of the tools—is what we're going to undertake as a nation state. I think we can continue to build. Again, we have sovereignty. We exercise our sovereignty. These are functions of having the right to govern activities within our jurisdiction, like the creation of parks, and I think it sends a confident message to the world. Also, when we're invoking mechanisms under, say, the Nunavut land claims agreement, that helps to reaffirm the internal sovereignties within Canada and the connectedness between northerners and the Canadian state. I think all of this sends helpful messages.
I do applaud the government on their approaches to dealing with the expansion of Nahanni National Park, a very appropriate way of balancing the interests of development and ecosystem management to accommodate multiple stakeholders who otherwise might have found themselves in conflict. I believe there are models there that can be applied elsewhere.