Thank you very much. I almost feel like there's a little bit of an old Manitoba mafia here, finding out you're from Selkirk and Brandon, being a good Birds Hill boy myself.
In the context of my comments overall, I have four comments in regard to the bill. But let me begin, first of all, by clearly expressing my support. This is an action that we've needed to take for a long time. I'm very happy to see that it is being brought forward, and particularly in conjunction with the mandatory element of the NORDREG reporting aspect. This is something that is of critical importance to our sovereignty concerns in the Arctic and our environmental protection of the Arctic. Having said that, I have four comments that I want to focus on. They deal with the institutions of the protection of our sovereignty, the enforcement that we need for our sovereignty, the surveillance that will flow from this particular act, and, lastly, the diplomatic effort that in my view will be necessary.
Now let me start talking about institutions. As several of the preceding speakers have made clear, Arctic sovereignty is indeed a hot topic, but it has of course been an issue that has been with us since the 1940s, picking up steam in the late 1960s and into 1970s. One of the things I think this bill illustrates is that we need better institutional formats to coordinate our overall Arctic policy. If we look at the history leading up to the creation of this law, we've already had two periods of time that in my view were lost opportunities when we could have strengthened our claims of Arctic sovereignty even more so. Both the Conservative and Liberal preceding governments have missed opportunities, and once again it comes back to the fact that I don't think we have the proper institutional oversight that addresses it as a pan-Canadian issue.
In 1986 the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney brought in the very strong act closing the Arctic with straight base lines. In my view, and in the view of others, there was the opportunity to have extended the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act at that point. Then in 1996, under the government of Jean Chrétien, the Canada Oceans Act was brought forward. Once again we did not see people quite thinking of extending the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act. I don't offer these comments as criticisms, but rather to suggest that as a result of the lack of an overall pan-Canadian bipartisan approach to the needs of Arctic sovereignty we often have found ourselves historically creating legislation such as Bill C-3 that is absolutely necessary but something that probably should have been and could have been done at least 20 years earlier.
Moving on to the bill itself, there are three major follow-throughs that absolutely have to be monitored and prepared for. The first one is the diplomatic requirement. There will, in all probability, be push-back from both the Americans and the Europeans. The Americans, in January this year, released an Arctic policy where they clearly stated that they view the Northwest Passage as an international strait, and ultimately, when push comes to shove, what we are doing with this act and it do not fit together. By the same token, in the fall of 2008 the European Commission issued a policy paper that also restated their position that the Northwest Passage is an international strait.
Now, we have, on the other hand, the fact that the Russian government is about to release a law very similar to what Bill C-3 is actually doing. We do have a country, Russia in this particular instance, that in fact is very much copying our efforts to increase our control of Arctic shipping. What this ultimately means, in my view, is that we need to launch a diplomatic effort to address those countries that may see this particular act as confrontational to their particular policies. I think it's necessary to push the environmental side to make it clear that perhaps under article 234 of the Law of the Sea we are in fact not going against their interests in this context. But that requires a very strong diplomatic effort.
We also should be looking, with our Russian neighbours, to coordinate the policy so that the world does not necessarily see this as a land grab, as it may be portrayed, but rather as proper environmental stewardship.
The two other aspects I'd just like to briefly touch on, which I note that some of the other commenters have raised already, are the issues of surveillance and enforcement. There is no question in my mind that this act, as necessary as it is, will require significantly more surveillance capabilities.
Once again, the coordination, I would argue, needs to be strengthened. When we're getting ready to put in such things as Radarsat-2, we may be looking at ways of having ship identification systems. There is already comment about the DND project to improve our surveillance, specifically Northern Watch. It is imperative when we have this type of legislation coming forward that efforts such as Northern Watch be strengthened and actually applied.
The last issue I'd like to raise is enforcement. I've taken the time to go through the Hansard comments in terms of the speeches made when this bill was introduced and also to see the comments of some of the other witnesses. I think the one theme the committee is probably very aware of is that if we are indeed serious about this legislation, we do need to be prepared to ensure that everybody is in fact following it. Also, when we indeed do face a country, company, or ship that may wish to challenge this particular legislation, we need to have the ability to ensure that the particular actor follows our legislation. That requires an enforcement capability that at this point in time we probably do not have in full.
We see this among the Russians, the Norwegians, and the Danes. In fact, they are thinking very similarly in terms of improving their enforcement. The promise of the Arctic offshore patrol vessels and the new large icebreaker will all be essential. I suspect we will find that when shipping comes forward, we will need even more than those particular infrastructures.
Ultimately, we need a pan-Canadian approach to ensure that we are we are taking action such as Bill C-3 in a timely fashion. We need to prepare for the diplomatic push-back that will be coming. We need to improve our surveillance and enforcement.
Thank you very much.