Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks, both of you, for your excellent presentations.
I guess I could say that I'm hearing from both of you a sense of urgency about certain matters. If I may paraphrase not only your evidence, but that of others, we don't really have a lot to worry about with respect to the land issues or even the continental shelf issues. It's a matter of doing the homework, of getting the data together. I don't know if you mentioned this outright, but the issue of the Americans in terms of the boundary is something that's manageable and perhaps should be settled, but there is still some uncertainty about the Northwest Passage.
We were told by Professor Byers that we ought to be ready to deal with possible issues as early as next summer because of the rapidly changing patterns in the extent of summer sea ice. I also want to bring to your attention the fact that Professor Pharand has referred us to a paper of his in which he has 12 things that Canada ought to do--and you've mentioned some of them, Professor Fortier--not to be pushy about our position on the Northwest Passage, but to bolster our claim by action in terms of navigation, making NORDREG mandatory, and some of the things you have suggested, such as having additional radar capacity, etc.
Concerning the sense of urgency that I'm sensing from you and the issues that need to be dealt with, how can we deal with something as early as next year if we're talking about a ship that seeks to go through the Northwest Passage, not respect Canada's issue of sovereignty, and not want to comply with our navigation and our Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act, for example?