Mr. Speaker, I rise to continue a question that I asked the government a week ago Monday on the Beaufort Sea and the border dispute between Canada and the United States. This border dispute started in the 1970s when the U.S. decided that the historical boundary on the longitudinal line between Alaska and Yukon was not appropriate and the appropriate boundary was a line perpendicular to the coastline. That meant that the U.S. had projected a claim on some 21,000 square kilometres of Canadian territorial waters in the Beaufort Sea.
In August the U.S. imposed a moratorium on commercial fishing in the waters around Alaska including the portion of the Beaufort Sea claimed by Canada. Canada responded to this movement with a diplomatic note, but in the meantime, we see that the U.S. has now entered into a planning process for the development of oil and natural gas drilling in the Beaufort Sea to the boundary that it has established for Canada.
The Alaskan oil industry regulator cleared the way for a series of lease sales over the next decade along a vast swath of coastal waters in the Beaufort Sea. It supports annual area-wide lease sales planned from this year through 2018 across about two million acres of near-shore waters and islands stretching from Point Barrow east to what the U.S. has now decided is the correct Canadian border.
The U.S. federal government takes responsibility for outer continental shelf oil and gas leasing, and it is planning for more extensive leasing in waters farther off the coast.
The lifting in 2008 of a moratorium on drilling in the Beaufort Sea has allowed the U.S. to do this in its waters and in the waters that it now claims from Canada. Of course, my question is what the government's response to this provocation is.
In a speech yesterday the Minister of Foreign Affairs talked about Canada's role as an energy superpower. He said, “[O]ur government does, and always will, stand up for our interests and ownership over the Arctic”. He said as well, “We will...respond appropriately when other nations push the envelope when it comes to Canada's Arctic”. But he returned again and again to the issue of sovereignty, assuring the audience that the government would act firmly against other nations which failed to respect the border. Canada is in control of its Arctic waters and takes its responsibilities very seriously.
My question for the government remains. What are we going to do about this provocation by the United States?