Okay.
Let me just be clear, because there was a little bit of a lack of clarity in Mr. Kessel's testimony on this point. The Chinese did not recognize Canada's legal position. They asked for permission to conduct scientific research, which is required even if the Northwest Passage is an international strait. They chose to not engage the legal dispute. They chose to find a way around it, and of course, this was easy, because the Xue Long, or “snow dragon”, is a research vessel. The Chinese passage is irrelevant for the purposes of Canadian sovereignty.
Of course, in the future there will be Chinese vessels that are not research vessels, that are cargo vessels that cannot plausibly be doing scientific research.