The issue with the Chinese is an interesting one because it's not going to be just China and Canada in the Arctic; it's going to be Canada in the new relationship with the new China. We're seeing this in terms of a very well thought out Chinese strategy of buying into our resource industry. They're doing it in Australia. They're doing it in Iceland. They're doing it in Greenland. They're doing it all above board, and it's all rule-based, but it's a long-term strategy to give them a control in the long term, and I think it's going to be quite interesting.
On the other hand, they are going to be the future for much of our resource development. We are a resource exporter. The Americans have shown that they're starting to have some questionable market elements, and they are going to be the future. The question is how we balance that.
The Chinese also know that they need us for the resources, but the Chinese have also made it clear that when it comes to their core interests, it doesn't matter in terms of friendships or new possibilities, they will do what they need to do. We found that out at the University of Calgary when we had the audacity to give the Dalai Lama an honorary degree and we got delisted as a university. Basically our president had to go and make apologies for having an independent university style in order to get the Chinese to say that we're acceptable. We're going to need to deal with the Chinese in a way that I think has to be mature and realistic, but in a greater context.
For the Beaufort, we're missing opportunities. We should be doing what the Australians and the Indonesians did to resolve the situation of the East Timor sea. They still say their particular view stands, but they work together in terms of environmental standards, resource development, and protection. I really think that's what we have to do.
The Americans have shown that they still want to act independent, because they put a moratorium on their fishing, which of course included the zone that we dispute. I don't understand why they didn't come to us and say they wanted to do this together, they wanted to do this through joint management. What that tells me is that the Americans still don't remember they have a northern neighbour in that context, and that makes it dangerous. I think missteps can really make that disastrous when the oil and gas does start, and it will start in that region.
For the Northwest Passage, as I was saying earlier, the key is not asking for everyone's blessing. The key is going forward and just saying, “This is our capability. We're listening to the international community for what we think standards are, but, by the way, this is a homeland.” People, Canadians, live here and have lived here since time immemorial, so we're not talking about some abstract figure—which Europeans are increasingly talking about. We need to have that ability to say to them, “This is the way we're doing it, and if you do dumb things like having the seal ban, that's going to have a ramification in that context.”
For Hans Island, I think that illustrates it. It's a silly conflict, but as soon as the Danes got a new piece of equipment, an ice-capable frigate, they escalated the crisis in 2002, from one of their scientists going and leaving a bottle of Danish liquor and our going and leaving a bottle of CC. It had been handled that way since 1974. They get a new piece of kit and they land troops. What does that say in terms of how these issues spiral out of control? That's really why we need to have surveillance and enforcement. That really, to a large degree, remedies many of the issues we'll be facing in the future.