On the first question, let's take article 234 and what happens if there's less ice. This is the article in the Law of the Sea Convention that allows coastal states to regulate shipping, commercial shipping, in their ice-covered waters. Is this going to be a diminishing source of strength for us as the ice recedes? I think it probably will to some degree, but again, there will be ice every winter and that ice is not going to go away entirely. There will perhaps--and it's an interesting question--be multi-year ice in the archipelago for quite some time as well. That is, there will be old ice, which is, as I'm sure you know, much stronger than one-year-old ice, seasonal ice. This old ice has lost its salt. It's like floating steel, and you need strengthened ships if you're going to be anywhere near it. This I think is a condition that is going to persist for quite some time, but in terms of the legal claim, I think you'd have to say--I would, without being a lawyer--practically speaking, if there is less and less ice, then article 234 is less strongly in our favour. So there is a worry there.
At the same time, we have an agreement with the United States to disagree about the status of the Northwest Passage, and I guess this comes to your second question.
The United States says it's a strait and we say these are internal waters, no question about it, which they are. The United States and Canada, the two of us, have found a way to live together with this contretemps. We've found a way to work together with icebreakers in the 1988 accord that we have. We could expand that to other kinds of ships, if we wished. The U.S. State Department, for its part, has said that it regards U.S. commercial vessels as bound by Canada's Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act. So U.S. commercial shipping companies are not going to get any support from the State Department if we charge them with some violation under article 234.
So one way or another, we and the U.S.A. can work things out, I think, and in my view we should maintain and strengthen the agreement to disagree that we have with them. We should surround the agreement to disagree with a bodyguard of bilateral cooperation in defence, on NORAD, in surveillance, on asymmetrical threats, but also on the whole agenda of stewardship in the Arctic waters of North America. We should not fear the United States but actually work with them--push back when we need to, but try to work out a management for the Arctic waters of North America that could then perhaps be projected into the Arctic region more generally. That is, we would have broken the ice, charted the way for good stewardship.
I'm sorry if I'm going on too long.