You mentioned submarines and their detection. We have the responsibility when we claim full control over these waters to have full control over these passages throughout. We must be in a position to show full and effective control, and that includes of course the stopping of foreign ships. These are sovereign waters of Canada. Do you have our permission? If you say yes, okay, fine; now we inspect and see if you conform to the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act and regulations of 1970.
One of the six measures I mention here is submarine detection. Normally, when you determine if a strait is an international one or not, and it makes all the difference in the world, you of course count only the transits of surface ships. However, I have to add that if you, as the coastal state, have reason to believe that you might have submarines using your waters, it might very well be held against you, and it might very well count as a foreign transit for which you did not ask permission. That is the reason why I have been suggesting for years that we should have submarine detection at both ends: Lancaster Sound and the McClure Strait and Amundsen Gulf. Here there's not much of a problem, because the submarine couldn't go far, but it's been proven that American submarines have been in the McClure Strait and Lancaster Sound, and we know about that, and that's fine. It's counted in the list of 69. I counted the foreign transits from 1905--Amundsen made the first trip in a fishing boat, from 1903 to 1905--to the end of 2005. In one hundred years, 69 crossings have taken place. That counts both ways, like in 1969, the Manhattan, a reinforced tanker, as a test made one way and then the other. I've counted that as two.
Since then, I have not the precise count, but we've had perhaps something like seven or eight tourist ships per year in the last two or three years. But this is certainly not enough to make the Northwest Passage an international strait or, as it is called in the convention, one used for international navigation. Relating to submarines, the difference is this: if it is an international strait, you have the new right, since the convention, called “transit passage”. It looks very innocent. It was fabricated by the U.K. delegation. It looks very innocent: transit. Transit passage means that as a foreign ship and a submarine, you do not even have to surface. The convention says right of passage in the normal mode of navigation. Well, the normal mode of navigation is under water. That is the big difficulty between the Americans and ourselves. They pretend that this is an international strait.