Let me just say that I agree with the spirit, or what I take to be the spirit, of your remarks, namely, that there needs to be perhaps some greater cooperation and coordination given the fact that we are facing a lot of movement of ships in and out of these areas.
I think something like 400 mines and well areas have been identified, so there will be a lot of movement of ships bringing equipment in and product out. It's not so much the issue of the transiting of these areas, which is good news. Usually, in the common parlance, it's described here as the Northwest Passage. Well, it's not so much that the Northwest Passage will be traversed from one side to the other very soon, but there is movement in and out of the Arctic, especially on the Russian side, and they in fact will take their security issues very seriously.
We haven't mentioned this, but it isn't just a question of our interaction with the Russians. This is an area that has to be examined in terms of what the terrorist implications might be. It's frightening to see how close Hudson Bay is to the cities, the heartland, of Canada and the United States. These areas can in fact be increasingly penetrated, not just by submarines but by surface ships. The capacity to identify what in fact these ships are carrying and so on is nascent, I would say, at this point.
But I think the spirit of your remarks is correct. We need to cooperate and coordinate.
I should say this. Canadians and Americans, being who they are, are fairly pragmatic. At this point what we've done is we've simply agreed to disagree. Then we've tried to do the best we can in terms of coordination.