Thank you very much.
I want to start by saying that if we show concern, or profound concern, in the case of my friend, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, about developments, it's not related to the work of your departments or anything else. Part of the work our committee wants to achieve with this study is to make more Canadians aware of the fragility, in some ways, not of our claims to the Arctic and to its waterways, but of others' respect for those claims. That's essentially what the driving force is, because of course I share his concerns.
I focused on our closest friend, the U.S., in my first round of questions. I now want to focus on Russia, and my friend, who is an expert in this area, stole a bit of my thunder. If you look at the Ilulissat Declaration, the year prior to that, in August 2007, was the second Arktika mission, where they planted a flag at the bottom of the seabed. The first was in 1977, when the first maritime vessel traversed from Russia.
When the crew of the 2007 seabed planting returned home, they were the heros of the Russian Federation. Russia has had ice stations on ice floes, which show the ever-changing nature of the Arctic waterways and, really, of sovereignty.
When I was in the military and we used to speak about the Arctic, we said that sometimes external sovereignty has to be demonstrated by internal sovereignty, or the ability to protect and govern a vast land space.
Do you feel that Canada needs to ramp up its presence and its exertion of sovereignty in its own internal waterways in order to have that recognized externally?