Mr. Chair, the minister knows very well that Ellesmere Island, the most northerly island in the Canadian Arctic, is home to the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. A Canadian army patrol, known as the sovereignty patrol, along with a team of scientists, has discovered huge cracks, which herald rapidly accelerating melting of Arctic ice.
Last year, Arthur Chilingarov, a former Arctic explorer and current vice-president of the Duma, went down to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean at the North Pole in a bathyscaphe to plant the Russian flag and claim the Arctic as Russian soil. The response of Canada's Prime Minister the following week was that Canada was going to build six to eight warships, not just ice breakers, but ice-worthy warships to patrol the Arctic.
Does the Minister of Foreign Affairs not believe that Canada should work diplomatically with other countries instead of building ice-worthy warships?