National Defence committee  That is a responsibility of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

National Defence committee  I'm not sure yet. We haven't got all the data. I don't think there is a major period or space that overlaps. I think you're right. Where there is any overlap, it's dealt with in the same way as there's overlap now. In many places around the world people are claiming the same territory, and it is a bilateral discussion.

National Defence committee  If I could add, we're not actually trying to look for resources, but to evaluate where resources might potentially lie. The private sector would take this information and become much more detailed and put a lot more effort into trying to delineate actual resources. One analogy is that we try to point out where the haystack is, and it's the private sector that goes in and tries to find the needle.

National Defence committee  It's about 1,200.

National Defence committee  Yes, the sediments are eroded material that's sliding off the land mass, and the thickness of the sediments decline as you move away from the land mass. There has been a definition, based on the scientific consensus of the thickness, that people take as the edge of the area that you can submit a claim for.

National Defence committee  Marc, do you want to talk to this?

National Defence committee  I actually couldn't say. They were a group of scientific experts who examined it and I guess they didn't feel that the evidence was sufficient for demonstrating the UNCLOS formulas. You'd have to ask the people who were involved in the analysis of it.

National Defence committee  I think they're absolutely of value to demonstrate the principles and ideas. They're again too coarse. They don't have enough detailed information to be the real definitive things that the UN commission will use for its determination, but they absolutely convey the general perception of what exists and how the claims are being proposed.

National Defence committee  That's an excellent question, and the whole purpose behind this map is to have one solid, consistent scientific database on which to make policy decisions. We're trying absolutely to avoid the question of different people having different protocols and different ideas. This collaboration was specifically to try to get agreement from all the circumpolar nations that this is the way to compile one geological map, and we've done that.

National Defence committee  Yes, we've had that discussion. Some of the work we do under the UNCLOS work is jointly with the Danes, or with the Americans, or with whomever, to try to collect one set of data that is definitive according to both countries' standards.

National Defence committee  I'm not sure we have had collaboration on collecting data, but we certainly have had collaboration on the standards that went into these maps. Marc.

National Defence committee  We actually have two programs related to the north. One is specifically designed to provide data for the UNCLOS submission. We will collect the best data we possibly can to make the best submission for Canada. That's the aim of that entire program. And it will finish in 2013, for the claim.

National Defence committee  Yes, and I appreciate that it's a complicated set of formulas that determine this. The first one is a definition of how deep the continental platform really is underwater. That's a part of it, because at some depth it's considered too deep to be part of the platform. The second part of the equation is how thick the sediments are.

National Defence committee  Yes, that's one of the estimates. It is based on fairly limited data; it's hard to know the exact extent of these things. But if you take what we know and project it out, that has absolutely been one of the calculations people have made.

National Defence committee  I don't think at this point I have anything really to add, so we can probably just go to questions.