Going back to you, Madam Lalonde, it's been suggested--and I've been reading some papers from the Library of Parliament on some of these issues. It seems, of course, that the principal legal and perhaps functional challenger on the Northwest Passage has been to date the United States. If there are others piling on.... There's been a suggestion in one of the papers that perhaps if the United States see a lot of international interest they might be inclined not to see it as an international strait anymore if it could be shown that Canada could effectively control that area, because the United States may not want everybody in there as an open passage, for overflight reasons, for security reasons, for all sorts of other reasons. Are you aware of any discussions about that? You seem to know what the legal theories are going on in the U.S. war colleges. Have you heard anything about this possibility that the U.S. might withdraw its objections under certain circumstances?
On April 29th, 2009. See this statement in context.