Evidence of meeting #109 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was passage.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:20 p.m.
Mr. Michael Levitt (York Centre, Lib.)
Thank you very much.
Last but not least, MP O'Toole, please.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I never thought I could use the “finders keepers” legal axiom in committee.
Thank you both very much for your very informative commentary.
Since you mentioned the Cormorant, Professor Byers, it warms the cockles of an ex-Sea King aviator's heart because, of course, that's the EH101 helicopter that was cancelled as a result of the 1993 election, much like decisions related to the F-35.
However, that aircraft has the ability to fly in conditions in our north, and you're saying you would like to see forward-operating bases. Would it shock you—and we're all very proud of the men and women at 440 Squadron in Yellowknife—to know that we essentially have three or four Twin Otters as our air presence in the north, apart from the odd 18 forward-operating at Inuvik? That's four Twin Otters for 40% of our land mass and 60% of our shores.
Is that adequate, in your professional opinions?
4:20 p.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
The Twin Otter is an amazing aircraft.
4:20 p.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
But it's slow, it cannot land vertically and it cannot winch people off a ship. I think we should keep the Twin Otters there, but supplement them, at least in the summer months, with more capacity further north and further east. Again, I defer to the professionals in the Canadian Forces as to what they need and where they need it. My only suggestion would be that, at the political level, they be given the support to provide the right kind of coverage.
In terms of the Cormorant, we have a limited number of them. They are growing old. There is a challenge in acquiring spare parts. At some point, parliamentarians are going to have to be in discussion with the Department of National Defence about the next generation of search and rescue helicopters.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Erin O'Toole Conservative Durham, ON
I was struck by the way you framed the beginning of your remarks, that sovereignty means different things to different people. There are the maritime boundaries and the legal discussion, but then you said it means something different to the people who live there.
One thing that was very clear from Inuit, indigenous and people on the ground on our tour was they consistently say, “Don't treat us like a park. We are not just a preserve for making you all feel good in the south. We want to be masters of our own domain.” Particularly, first nations have that right inherently. Does this park-like approach, Prime Minister Trudeau's ban on development and these sorts of things, hurt our claims to sovereignty?
A park obviously doesn't exhibit any presence of state. It doesn't allow us to have domain over our waters and our land, so does this approach of just preserves and Arctic parks hinder our ability to substantively advance our claims to the Arctic?
4:20 p.m.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Université de Montréal, As an Individual
No, not in that sense at all, because it's a choice. It's a decision. When I spoke of marine protected areas, there's a whole range of management options from a no-take national park to sustainable use.
A state in its own territory decides where it's going to establish a protected area, and this is going to be the plan, the management plan, and the values protected there. I think that's an exercise of sovereignty, but I think you're absolutely right. I think much care and concern has to be shown in consulting and making sure that those management plans, those decisions, reflect the needs and wishes of the local populations.
I think this is what's maybe happening with the Lancaster Sound marine protected area. They're saying forget about this kind of.... It's not just sustainable harvesting, like cultural harvesting. They want to participate in any economic opportunities, but sustainably.
4:20 p.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
Speaking of the Lancaster Sound marine protected area about which the Inuit were closely involved in negotiations, there are iron ore carriers, vessels, that go through that protected area on a regular basis from the Mary River mine, which is on Inuit-owned land. There's a prime example of one of the more significant mining projects in the north, the largest in, I believe, eastern Nunavut, which is cohabiting quite well with the marine protected area because of the Inuit involvement throughout.
4:25 p.m.
Mr. Michael Levitt (York Centre, Lib.)
With that, I'm going to thank both of our witnesses for their very insightful and illuminating testimony today.
Professor Byers, I know you're rushing off to be on your way to other places.
I want to thank you both and, with that, we shall suspend while the other panel gets in place.
4:30 p.m.
Mr. Michael Levitt (York Centre, Lib.)
Good afternoon. We're resuming the meeting.
We have our second panel, both on video and in person.
On video, we have Heather Conley, senior vice-president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic, and the director for the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Welcome, and thank you for joining us.
We also have Adam Lajeunesse, who is the Irving Shipbuilding chair in Arctic marine security with the Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University. He's in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Welcome.
Last but not least, joining us here, we have John Higginbotham, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, as well as the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton.
After that long introduction, we'll begin with Ms. Conley, and then we'll go to Adam Lajeunesse. We'll save our in-house guest for last.
Please begin, and if you can keep your remarks to eight minutes, that would be great.
4:30 p.m.
Heather Conley Senior Vice President for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Thank you very much. It is a great pleasure to be able to be with you via video link.
I just want to speak very briefly about growing concerns that we have here in Washington about Russia's military presence in the Arctic. We've seen over the last decade that Russia has placed the Arctic squarely within its military doctrine and its new maritime doctrine. It has established a new Arctic strategic command. It has focused its military modernization efforts on its nuclear submarine deterrent in its northern fleet. It has [Technical difficulty—Editor] across the Russian Arctic. We are detecting where some of these airfields will increasingly have surface-to-air missiles placed on them and where they are focusing their special forces training among these airfields.
We have seen where Russia has certainly been exercising its Arctic capabilities. In March of 2015, we awoke to an unannounced snap military exercise in the Arctic where the Russians demonstrated, at full combat readiness, a complex air, sea and land exercise in the Arctic. This was then followed by recent exercises in 2017, the ZAPAD, or western military district exercise, where we've seen continued exercising in and around the Kola Peninsula. Then, of course, we all finished watching the Vostok exercise, which was the largest Russian military exercise since the 1980s and which also involved Arctic exercising in the western Pacific and the east. Again, there was rapid military mobilization. These were very complex combined operations.
In essence, what we're seeing is a focused effort by the Russian military to think about the Arctic and return it to its strategic imperative that it held during the Cold War. We're seeing a doctrine, a streamlined command structure, new equipment, new forces, and a repeated exercising of those capabilities.
I want to, though, caution that we don't over-sensationalize Russia's military footprint in the Arctic. This is not Russia as it was at the height of the Cold War. I believe what we are seeing is a return to some semblance of a Russian power projection capability that's highly concentrated for the north Atlantic and bastion defence around the Kola Peninsula. It has some [Technical difficulty—Editor] to the east with direct implications for the United States and Alaska as well as for Canada.
What makes it difficult for us to completely understand Russia's growing military footprint in the Arctic is that it sometimes is hard to decide, when Russia announces something new in the Arctic, whether they are reannouncing something they have not been able to achieve because they've fallen very far behind in their procurement timelines or in their announcements.
Sometimes we see Russia's military-industrial complex being used to help develop Russia's very ambitious economic ideas for the northern sea route. For example, the 10 search and rescue centres that Russia will be constructing along the northern sea route will be dual use military use. We will have to discern what is civilian and what is military.
We do have, I think, a very strong sense that this has been a priority for the Russian government for the last decade. It is a prestige project for President Putin. He is often on hand to watch Arctic exercises. He was on hand as they unveiled their first very modern special forces base on Kotelny Island just a few months ago. President Putin is very focused on the Arctic. They see it as their economic future base, and they also see it as a revitalized military opportunity.
We are also concerned about China's growing economic and scientific footprint in the Arctic. This is where Russia and China combined in some ways, very focused on the Yamal Peninsula, and that is for the Yamal LNG megaproject but [Technical difficulty—Editor] as the infrastructure, whether that's in Greenland, in Iceland, in their scientific research centres, railways, undersea cables, whether that's in Finland or in Norway, the port infrastructure and the LNG, we also need to now appreciate that China's growing economic role will also have strategic implications.
U.S. policy-makers are concerned. When China bid on airports in Greenland, what were the strategic implications for the United States for the Thule air force base in Greenland? There is a growing awareness, very much along the lines of our national security strategy and national defence strategy, that we have great power competition with Russia and China across the globe, and we are trying to understand how that manifests itself in the Arctic. It requires much more study and research, not hype. What is going on? What are the trajectories? What are the strategic implications for the United States? What are the strategic implications for Canada?
I will just finish my opening remarks by saying that NATO must have a greater awareness of both Russia's military posture in the Arctic as well as the strategic implications of China's economic role in the Arctic.
Now we are starting Trident Juncture, the largest NATO exercises centred on Norway, the Norwegian Sea and in the north. After this exercise, this is an opportune moment for the North Atlantic Council to receive a briefing, not only on how NATO operated in the north, but again, a detailed briefing on Russia's military footprint.
Now that NATO has decided to revitalize the Atlantic command in Norfolk, we are going to be concentrating on anti-submarine warfare and the GIUK gap, which is the gateway to the Arctic. We are seeing a revitalization of our Cold War muscle memory, but we're doing this in a different way, not a heavy footprint [Technical difficulty--Editor] U.S. navy officials are very concerned about Russia's nuclear deterrent in their submarine forces, which are quite lethal and quite capable.
We need to have this conversation in NATO. We need to revitalize the North Atlantic as a strategic region of importance, and we must also shift our attention to the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea and Russia's eastern Arctic, because we are also seeing changes in their posture.
I'd be delighted to answer any additional questions and, again, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
4:40 p.m.
Mr. Michael Levitt (York Centre, Lib.)
Thank you very much, Ms. Conley.
Now, live from Antigonish, we have Adam Lajeunesse.
Go ahead, Mr. Lajeunesse.
4:40 p.m.
Adam Lajeunesse Irving Shipbuilding Chair in Arctic Marine Security, Mulroney Institute of Government, St. Francis Xavier University, As an Individual
Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here, if only digitally.
I would like to take a few minutes today to share my thoughts on Canada's relationship with two of the states most commonly tied to contemporary debates on Arctic sovereignty. The first is our traditional partner and sometimes opponent in the Arctic, the United States. The second is the newest and perhaps one of the most assertive new entrants into the region, China.
While the United States has long been Canada's premier partner in the Arctic, it has also been the state with which we have most frequently quarrelled over the status of the region. The U.S. denies our historic waters claim and the applicability of the straight baseline doctrine to the archipelago, and insists on the existence of an international strait running through the archipelago.
Still, it's important to highlight that this disagreement has been very well managed since at least the early Cold War, largely because neither Canada nor the United States really stands to benefit from an open political confrontation. As such, a modus vivendi took shape in the 1950s that remains in place today.
This approach is best described as an agreement to disagree, a sort of tacit understanding that neither side will push the issue in a way that will damage the other's legal position. This set-up has long dominated Canadian-American Arctic relations and was even given legal form in the 1988 Canada-U.S. agreement on Arctic co-operation. This agreement and structure have worked very well.
Historically, the United States has actually shown very little interest in access to the Arctic waters per se. Rather, American concern has revolved around global freedom of navigation and the fear that acquiescence to Canada's interpretation of the status of the north might weaken America's position elsewhere. David Colson, the State Department official negotiating with Canada in 1986, put it very simply, saying, “we couldn't be seen doing something for our good friend and neighbor”—that's us—“that we would not be prepared to do elsewhere in the world.”
When the U.S. thinks about sovereignty and the Northwest Passage, it's thinking about the Russian Arctic and straits running through Indonesia, the Philippines, and other strategic choke points around the world. The fear of setting a precedent continues to be that country's primary concern, and it is represented in American policy documents.
Despite the political difficulties and somewhat tense exchanges, Canada and the U.S. have actually worked remarkably well in the region, putting sovereignty to the side to achieve practical objectives. The most obvious example is the activity of American nuclear attack submarines, which have used Canadian Arctic waters since the 1960s and likely continue to do so to this day. The available evidence actually suggests that far from being a sovereignty challenge, these missions were ones that Canada knew of and indeed participated in.
While this dispute is well managed, I would at least offer a word of caution on this note. The diplomatic balancing act that keeps the Northwest Passage from re-emerging as a political conflict has for decades and even generations been based on careful diplomacy, mutual respect and a willingness by both parties to avoid conflict rather than pressing for a legal resolution of the disagreement.
The current U.S. administration has a very different modus operandi than all of its predecessors, and is far more prone to seek short-term, even symbolic wins at the expense of long-term partnerships. It may be entirely speculative, but I think Canada should be ready for the question of the Northwest Passage to possibly re-emerge as a point of diplomatic conflict. To be frank, all that would be required for a renewed fight would be for the American President to learn of the dispute and to feel the need to attack Canada for some real or perceived slight. Five years ago this would have seemed absurd, but we live in interesting times.
One of the most important new actors in the Arctic, and the subject of much speculation, is China. China now calls itself a near-Arctic state, and there are concerns that Beijing may seek to challenge Canada's Arctic sovereignty, given its interests in northern shipping and resource extraction.
In January of 2018, China released its official Arctic policy, and its position on Canadian sovereignty was ambiguous. The relevant passage in that document says that China respects Canadian sovereignty “in the waters subject to their jurisdiction”, without specifying what those waters might be.
It goes on to say that China enjoys “freedom of navigation” in accordance with UNCLOS, which is a reference to the right of transit passage through international straits guaranteed in article 38 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
While this paraphrasing could be seen to imply a Chinese assumption of free navigation through the region and in the Northwest Passage in particular, there are other ways to read that statement. The ambiguity inherent in China's position is almost certainly intentional, with the waters muddied just enough to allow Beijing to skirt the issue, neither locking itself into recognition of Canadian sovereignty nor needlessly offending the Canadian government.
Domestic Chinese maritime interests actually make it unlikely that China will challenge Canadian sovereignty. China relies on straight baselines, as do we, to enclose the Qiongzhou Strait and the country's longest baseline. China's longest baseline is actually only eight miles shorter than the longest Canadian Arctic baseline, which stretches across M'Clure Strait. While the comparison here isn't perfect, it means that any challenge to Canadian sovereignty could be seen as a self-defeating precedent for China.
Increased Chinese activity in the region and potential shipping in Canadian waters more generally shouldn't require a radical shift in Canadian strategy. That has long been to exercise control over the Arctic waters while allowing the passage of time to strengthen the state's legal and political position. In fact, Canada can leverage increased Chinese and foreign activity in the region to strengthen its position. The acceptance of Canadian control by new entrants like China offers Canada a precedent of implied consent.
One of the fundamental prerequisites of historic waters, on which we base our claim to sovereignty, is the acceptance of Canadian control by those most affected. Historically, this has meant foreign governments, particularly the U.S. In the future it will mean shipping companies and independent operators. If Canada continues to regulate and assist foreign shipping, it simply reinforces that sovereignty position.
Crucial to this assumption is the idea that Canada can effectively assert its control over foreign activity in the Northwest Passage. Effective control is important. Exercising this control and providing Canadian support for maritime activity in the region not only demonstrates Canadian sovereignty but allows Canada to leverage its assets to ensure compliance. Icebreaking services, ice reporting and other infrastructure can support foreign shipping, and if a foreign ship fails to comply with Canadian instructions or regulations, it can be cut out of this system.
Conversely, the absence of such support may incentivize foreign actors to operate outside of Canada's reporting and regulatory framework on the assumption that there is little to lose by doing so. If foreign actors see no advantage to working within the Canadian system, they may begin to treat the Northwest Passage as an international strait in which Canadian control is nominal at best.
Canadian sovereignty is therefore not in the midst of any sort of crisis. Our legal position is well established, and the disputes that exist are well managed. Moving forward, however, Canada will have to make a real effort to maintain its effective control over the region. It must also keep an eye on existing disputes, which, historically speaking, have a habit of cropping up when least expected.
Thank you. I'm happy to take questions.
4:50 p.m.
Mr. Michael Levitt (York Centre, Lib.)
Thank you very much.
We will now hear from Professor Higginbotham, please.
4:50 p.m.
John Higginbotham Senior Fellow, Carleton University and CIGI, As an Individual
Good afternoon. It's a great honour and pleasure to be here to meet you. I'm a sort of recovering public servant, or a retired public servant who has fashioned himself into a so-called Arctic expert in the last few years. I'm not an international lawyer, so I can't speak with the certainty that some of my colleagues do.
I want to talk about Arctic sovereignty in a wider, more existential sense, rather than a narrow legal one. I'm interested in Canadian nation building in the Arctic as the ultimate expression of Canadian sovereignty, as well as, of course, in the international and domestic regulatory machinery of sovereignty.
How did I get engaged in the Arctic? As a diplomat, I worked mainly in Washington, Hong Kong and China, for many years. These were great experiences that made me look at my own country in a different way, not necessarily as others see us.
In Ottawa, I had a number of jobs related to Canadian foreign policy planning and transportation. For five years, I had the great pleasure of working at Transport Canada, coordinating the Asia-Pacific gateway and corridor initiative. It was a successful example of multipartisan federal-provincial and private sector co-operation in facilitating Canada's international trade.
I learned first-hand to appreciate the critical historical and contemporary roles of the national government in providing direct or indirect support for major transport, energy and communications infrastructure. Our current web of economic infrastructure, built over centuries, has enabled very broad, deep economic and social development, public and private, in Canada.
In contrast, I also came to understand more deeply the huge infrastructure, economic and social development gap that exists between northern and southern Canada. Frankly, I was shocked by it. I found the lack of national political attention to Arctic economic and social development understandable but troubling, particularly given the changing international environment.
I was impressed in particular by the lack of Canadian attention to the melting of the Arctic Ocean. This huge geographic fact is driving unprecedented thinking, interest and investment in Arctic economic and social development in Alaska, Russia, Norway and Greenland, as well as rising interest in China, a country I know well.
The melting is also precipitating important geopolitical recalculations as global balances shift and shudder. However, Canada sleeps. We are falling further and further behind in investing in the core pan-Canadian Arctic infrastructure and policies that would enable the peoples, communities and regional government of Canada's Arctic and all Canadians to adapt and flourish in this new world. I see it as the maritimization of the Arctic archipelago looking forward 50 years—an astonishing vision that we should be thinking about now.
This infrastructure gap is particularly poignant at a time when the pillars of North American integration and co-operation are threatened by our neighbour to the south and the development of self-reliant Canadian economic development is increasingly urgent.
To step back a bit from the integration and globalization, we have prospered from the benign environment of the last 30 or 40 years.
The Arctic is one of our aces in the hole economically, as it is for Russia now, over the very long term. Think of the third option of the first Trudeau government, revisited under different circumstances that have illustrated our profound vulnerability to changes in U.S. policy. The third-option policy focused on national domestic economic development, not just the usual magical remedy of diversified trade, which I have heard about for 40 or 50 years of my career.
Who's responsible for our huge Arctic development gap? Successive federal governments have mainly focused for decades on important Canadian Arctic identity and governance issues. Nothing I have to say on the importance of infrastructure means that I am mindlessly pro-development or have any problem with a great emphasis on aboriginal reconciliation. Nor do I at all deny climate change.
However, there's been very little attention to parallel economic and social investment programs in these priorities that facilitate other national goals in the Arctic, from security to legal claims, indigenous reconciliation, robust territorial democratic governments and environmental stewardship.
The same complacency affects our approach to the geopolitics of the Arctic. We have ignored important emerging geopolitical challenges since Crimea in Russia and Trump in the United States, because of our very comfortable and complacent place under the U.S.'s security and trade umbrella. Now that trust is somewhat in question. We've seen it shattered in the trade and economic area—which, again, I have worked on extensively—and we're just pulling ourselves out of the debris there. We'll come out all right, but it's equally possible for those disturbances to apply in the defence, security and sovereignty area.
We see new Arctic strategic tensions and military activities all around us—as Heather has mentioned—starting with Russia's decades-long and very impressive military-civil buildup around the northern sea route. China's main Arctic “belt and road” partner is Russia, and China is funding Russian Arctic energy developments in Yamal and elsewhere, despite low oil prices and western sanctions. It's part of Putin's national will.
Threat is always a combination of capacity and intent. It seems to me that prudence demands an updating of our overall strategic analysis, taking the unexpected fully into account. There are also important continental security changes, as the north warning system ages, as new threats appear, as NORAD faces reorganization and as the United States considers a more active surface role in the Arctic Ocean.
As long as Trumpist nationalism reigns, we must put a footnote—a large footnote—under our excellent trust and co-operative relations over many years with the United States. One can only hope the President does not turn his powerful America First machine to the Arctic dimensions of Canada-U.S. continental defence, especially in the Arctic, including his charge that from a security point of view, Canada is a free rider.
We must remember that all of our machinery asserting our Arctic claims depends on a continuation of the liberal international order, which we have supported based on the foundation of United States' support since World War II. We must realize that that cannot be entirely taken as much for granted now as it was three or four years ago.
5 p.m.
Mr. Michael Levitt (York Centre, Lib.)
Professor Higginbotham, can you maybe wrap up in 30 seconds? I want to allow plenty of time for the questions I know there will be.
5 p.m.
Senior Fellow, Carleton University and CIGI, As an Individual
To sum up, it's widely accepted that this and previous federal governments have been unable or unwilling to fund, develop and implement a long-term federal investment plan for the Canadian Arctic that would make the Arctic truly ours. Consultation, coordination and hope that the private sector, through ingenious P3s, will fill the gap are all very well, but my experience suggests that in this complex situation, the buck still stops in Ottawa, conceptually and financially, in the case of serious Canadian Arctic development.
I hope your recommendations reflect this.
5 p.m.
Mr. Michael Levitt (York Centre, Lib.)
Thank you very much.
We are going to begin with MP Alleslev, please.
October 17th, 2018 / 5 p.m.
Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, CPC
Thank you very much to all of you. I think you've made very compelling cases for how our sovereignty may be under threat in the Arctic.
I'd like to ask each one of you what the consequence is, from your perspective, of Canada not being able to maintain its sovereignty. We have a population that we have to communicate to. They don't spend a lot of time thinking about the Arctic. If I could be so blunt, so what if we lose sovereignty in the Arctic? What difference would that make to Canada and to our allies?
Who'd like to go first?
5 p.m.
Irving Shipbuilding Chair in Arctic Marine Security, Mulroney Institute of Government, St. Francis Xavier University, As an Individual
Thank you. That's a very good question.
Canadian Arctic sovereignty, as we understand the dispute, is a question of ownership over the Northwest Passage. That is essentially what is being challenged. No one is challenging Canadian ownership of the land or anything of that nature. The loss of sovereignty would mean the loss, by Canada, of the ability to regulate and govern the waters within the archipelago, as they are historic internal waters. That means that in the most extreme circumstance, Russian or Chinese warships would legally be permitted to sail these waters.
In a far more likely but perhaps equally concerning manner, we would lose the ability to regulate commercial shipping, oil tankers, foreign commerce, moving through those waters. That regulation would fall to the International Maritime Organization, rather than the federal government.
5 p.m.
Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, CPC
So what? So what if we lose the ability to control those waters and the shipping in them?
5 p.m.
Irving Shipbuilding Chair in Arctic Marine Security, Mulroney Institute of Government, St. Francis Xavier University, As an Individual
Our regulations right now, with respect to the environment in particular, are more stringent than those in place at the IMO. Canada does demand more, and we have different penalties from what are prescribed by international law, which is something we feel is essential, given the unique nature of these waters.
5 p.m.
Senior Vice President for Europe, Eurasia, and the Arctic, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Thank you.
I think in some ways Canada and the United States share the same challenge of the North American Arctic—sparsely populated, with a deficit of infrastructure, but extraordinary energy and mineral resources. We haven't really given it more strategic thought, as opposed to our Russian or Norwegian colleagues, who see the Arctic as an absolute imperative, economically and militarily. After the Cold War, we in some ways lost our appreciation. It was a place for the Arctic Council. It was for environmental protection and sustainable economic development.
We've lost our strategic vision for this region.
My argument is that China and Russia do have a strategic vision and imperative for the Arctic. We need to decide what is in our nations' best interest. I think Alaska is experiencing the same challenge. In some ways, Alaska's energy was designed for American energy security and independence. The energy revolution has changed that. What is Alaska's energy for? Is it for export to China? Is that an engine of economic growth? What is its strategic purpose? The nation has to make that decision.
What worries me is that we will see an increase of commercial vessel traffic that will traverse the Bering Strait. There will be Chinese LNG carriers that will be going to the Yamal Peninsula and back. We will have Chinese container shipments traversing our waters. We need to protect the[Technical difficulty—Editor] coastline to make sure that we prevent any environmental degradation.
Norway, for example, had an instance a few years ago of a scientific vessel stopping off in Svalbard in the Norwegian archipelago. They didn't know who was coming off that vessel.
We have to be able to protect our people, our coastline and our waters, and to project territorial defence if required.
You are absolutely right. The question is, what is our vision and what is the national policy behind that?