There are a couple of responses to that question. One is that I think we are managing the dispute quite well now. We have a 1988 Arctic accord between the U.S. and Canada under which we agreed to disagree on the status of the passage and agreed that U.S. icebreakers would request permission from Canada to go through the strait. That seems to be working quite well. Obviously it doesn't cover the naval vessels or specifically commercial vessels, should they come in the future. So there is a concern there.
Also, I would say this: that article 234 of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, in most academic viewpoints including mine, would apply to the Northwest Passage, which gives you the right to not only legislate but enforce your special measures, such as zero pollution for oil and zero pollution for garbage, which we now put in place.
I think sometimes this dispute is blown out of proportion, but you never know when disputes can come back to bite you. So I guess I would say that in the long run, maybe we should be revisiting that Arctic accord and perhaps extend it to cover commercial vessels.
I think the naval/military question is another one. I'm not party to all the agreements that may be in place on that front or where that should maybe go in the future. That's a whole separate point.