Ultimately, my argument is that we have to stop talking about Arctic sovereignty because it clouds other issues. When I speak to students, I say that sovereignty is four things, which I remember by the acronym TRAP: you have territory, you need recognition, you need autonomy to make decisions, and you need to show some sort of control. Whereas it used to be that it would be quite common for countries to invade another country to get access to more resources or financing or things like that, we now have international laws that say that's not acceptable. They are rare occasions.
Where I get concerned is that when we constantly talk about sovereignty being “taken away” in the Arctic, what we're talking about, really, is people not recognizing our Arctic as Canadian anymore. I think that needs to be carefully considered. I think we do have presence. I think we do have Canadian laws. We do have international laws. I'd rather the discussion be not about sovereignty but about what infrastructure we need and how we will defend Canada. Those are conversations we can operationalize.