Thank you very much.
I am very pleased to be here today. I do speak French, of course, but my English is better, so my remarks will be in English today.
You have benefited from testimony from the legal adviser at Global Affairs Canada, Alan Kessel, who is one of the finest international lawyers I know. I'm going to try to build a little on his work and perhaps explain a couple of the key issues in slightly different terms so that everyone understands the landscape here.
The first thing I want to say is that Arctic sovereignty is sometimes understood to be different things. For a lawyer like Mr. Kessel, Arctic sovereignty concerns our relations with other nation states, so it concerns maritime boundaries, it concerns our single land dispute over Hans Island, and it concerns the status of the Northwest Passage. For an international lawyer like Mr. Kessel, that is what sovereignty means.
For people who live in the north, sovereignty includes a broader range of issues. It includes search and rescue. It includes policing of things like smuggling, the drug trade or illegal immigration. It also concerns social and economic issues, the housing crisis and the health crisis. Sovereignty is a large concept, but for lawyers, it's a fairly narrow one.
I'm going to speak to the narrower form of sovereignty, but I am willing in questions to talk about issues like search and rescue or icebreaking.
To start, let's go from the least concern to what I think may be the largest concern. Let's start with Denmark. Denmark owns the largest island in the world that is not a continent, i.e., Greenland. Greenland has a degree of self-government, but for the purposes of foreign relations, Denmark is in charge.
We have two insignificant boundary or territorial disputes with Denmark. One is over Hans Island, 1.3 square kilometres of rock. The dispute does not concern the water around the island. We have an agreed maritime boundary right up to the low water mark on each side. We've had that boundary since 1973, so it's only the rock, 1.3 square kilometres in a region that is measured in thousands and thousands of kilometres.
The other insignificant dispute with Denmark concerns a couple of tiny, really small, areas in the Lincoln Sea north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island. This dispute has, for all practical purposes, been resolved by a working group between the two countries. It simply concerned whether you could count a small island as a base point for calculating the boundary. As I understand it, the two governments could announce an agreed solution at any time that it was politically opportune to do so, so it's not significant. Denmark is not a problem. They are, of course, a NATO country, and we have a very vibrant trading relationship with them, including in the new European-Canada trade agreement.
Then there's Russia. Some of you are aware that Russia has been behaving very badly lately, including in Ukraine and in Syria, and, it would seem, in the United States and the United Kingdom. I have no illusions about Russia, but in analyzing Russia's posture in the Arctic, I have some optimism, not because Vladimir Putin is friends with Canada, but because he is a rational actor. Russia is the largest country in the world, and it has a very large uncontested Arctic territory. Russia has very large uncontested exclusive economic zones in the Arctic.
Russia has roughly one-half of the Arctic uncontested within its jurisdiction. It doesn't want any more Arctic. It doesn't need any more Arctic. It also knows that the Arctic is an extremely expensive place in which to operate. In the Arctic, for rational reasons, Russia is therefore behaving itself.
This is really important to realize. The Russians cannot afford to militarize another front. They've already got problems along the borders with NATO countries in eastern Europe. They already have a very big commitment in the Middle East. They're worried about their land border with China and issues in the Russian far east. In an optimal world for them, they might have an interest in the Arctic, but this is not an optimal world for Russia. Russia is actually in economic and demographic crisis, so it co-operates.
The Arctic Council is functioning normally. It's remarkable, but it is functioning normally. To their credit, former foreign ministers Lawrence Cannon and Stéphane Dion made a real effort in working on Arctic co-operation with Russia, realizing that this was an opportunity to keep one part of that relationship calm.
Let's talk about the United States. The United States is, of course, our most important ally, including in NATO and NORAD. The United States has massive naval interests around the world. It has a very strong interest in freedom of navigation, and we have a long-standing friendly dispute with the United States over the status of the Northwest Passage. They regard it as an international strait that passes through Canada's waters—Canadian, but subject to a right of passage—and we consider it to be internal waters.
Since 1988, when Brian Mulroney negotiated the arctic co-operation agreement with the United States, we have agreed to disagree. They always ask us for permission to conduct scientific research while transiting the Northwest Passage, and we always give it.
This brings me to China. The good news here is that last year, when China sent its research icebreaker, the Xue Long or “snow dragon” through the Northwest Passage, it decided it had no interest in challenging Canada's claim. Some exceptional diplomacy took place between Canadian and Chinese representatives, with the Chinese asking for permission to conduct scientific research and Canada agreeing.
Why is this important? Regardless of whether it's an international strait or internal waters, you need permission to conduct scientific research. The United States and China have both sidestepped the dispute. They haven't acquiesced to Canada's position. They've simply chosen not to engage with the dispute, and to sidestep it.
That brings me to my final point. The United States will continue to behave as it has. It has certain interests in Canadian co-operation in the Arctic. I'm not worried about the United States in the Northwest Passage.
China has not taken a position with regard to the legal status of the Northwest Passage yet, but it's unclear how China will move in the future. Its main interest is in safe, efficient commercial shipping. It therefore ideally needs extensive Canadian co-operation. It needs search and rescue. It needs aids to navigation. It needs ports of refuge. Rationally, therefore, it will want to work with Canada.
It also has a somewhat similar dispute regarding Hainan Island and mainland China—the Qiongzhow Strait or the Hainan Strait—where it has one legal opponent, the United States, and where the Chinese position is identical to Canada's position in the Northwest Passage.
My final message from my introductory comments is that the one thing I see as diplomatically important right now in the Arctic is to actually engage with China. We may not come up with an agreement to resolve all of our differences, but we need to make it clear that we want to work with China with regard to Arctic shipping, so that we can prevent them from coming down on the opposite side from us regarding the legal status of the Northwest Passage.
Thank you very much.