Canada should really take the initiative on an international protocol. In my opinion, it is the only country that can take the initiative, because it is directly affected when the European Union, Asian countries and the United States use the Northwest Passage.
If Canada wants to defend its sovereignty in that passage, if it wants to protect its environment up to 200 nautical miles, as Bill C-3 proposes, then an international protocol to protect the environment is absolutely essential. This sort of protocol already exists to protect the Antarctic. It was negotiated at length and ratified. The Madrid Protocol protects the Antarctic ecosystems extremely effectively, and nearly all the countries in the world signed this protocol, after much hesitating and lengthy negotiations. If there is a protocol to protect the Antarctic that is called the Madrid Protocol, why could there not be a protocol to protect the Arctic that would be known as the Ottawa Protocol or something like that.
I do not see what country other than Canada could take the lead on this, because Canada is the country that would suffer the most in the event of an oil spill. As the other witnesses mentioned, an oil spill is hard to imagine, just as a nuclear accident is hard to imagine, and so we must do everything we can to prevent it from happening.
We have to find ways to prevent a major spill from happening, because we do not have the means to protect ourselves or clean up after such a spill.