From a broader sovereignty and security perspective, it doesn't really matter much whether the rare earth elements or other critical minerals are located in southern Ontario or in Nunavut. In a lot of this conversation, we are talking about foreign governments or foreign companies gaining equity interests and the ability, in some cases, to decide whether to ship those resources abroad, even in the circumstance that they're needed in Canada for security reasons.
That issue of control over the products of a mine is a nationwide issue, and that's what we've been talking about so far. In terms of the Arctic, we have undisputed 100% control over all of the land territory in the Canadian Arctic. Our only dispute, concerning tiny Hans Island, was resolved in a very friendly way with Denmark three years ago. There's no question of sovereignty over land, and there's no country that disputes that sovereignty. There is, of course, a current president in the United States who has expressed a desire to make all of Canada the 51st state of the U.S.A., but that is a somewhat different issue.
We do have a couple of maritime boundary disputes, one of which is in the Beaufort Sea. There were negotiations on that between Canada and the United States during the Biden administration. It should be relatively easy to resolve. In terms of resources, it mostly concerns hydrocarbons that could be in the continental shelf. Access would be very expensive and is not feasible at the current world price for oil.
We also have, not a boundary dispute, but a dispute over the legal status of the Northwest Passage. The United States has long held that it's an international strait that foreign vessels can use without Canadian permission. Canada takes the view that it is Canadian internal waters and that our consent is required. We've agreed to disagree with the United States on this issue since 1988, in a moment of brilliant Canadian diplomacy by then prime minister Brian Mulroney in partnering with U.S. president Ronald Reagan.
In terms of sovereignty and critical minerals, my concern isn't about anyone gaining sovereignty over Canadian territory; my concern comes back to the issue of whether we would be able to say no in the event that a foreign-owned mining company were to choose to ship that resource out of Canada, even if it were needed here if, let's say, we needed access to some rare earth elements for the production of a fleet of fighter jets in Canada and saw that resource shipped off to China or the United States. That's a critical issue for me.
I'm very uncomfortable with the fact that the U.S. Department of Defense is acquiring an equity interest in some of these mines in Canada. That strikes me as a problem in our current situation, and I hope that we look at that during the renegotiation of CUSMA.