Foreign Affairs committee  One point of clarification is that the cold war is over and Russia has been cooperating with NATO and the U.S. on joint military exercises in the air. Russian generals were sitting down in the NORAD base in Colorado viewing it on computer. Times have changed. We forget who is our

Foreign Affairs committee  No, I'm thinking that if they enter our airspace, they should be challenged.

Foreign Affairs committee  You're introducing the Russian model for the Northern Sea Route, basically.

Foreign Affairs committee  We actually have that. The Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act is probably what the IMO should be basing its position on. It's excellent. It's just a matter of being able to enforce it, to have the ships that can find those in non-compliance. They're small ships. They're small

Foreign Affairs committee  We also have to have a place where we can meet them on the entrance, and we don't have it. Our centre is Iqaluit, at the end of a long bay. Churchill is our only deep seaport. It's owned by an American company, by the way, as is the rail link from the CNR. Yes, there's a future t

Foreign Affairs committee  She covered where the dialogue has to start, but there's a need to actually identify funding, government funding, Nunavut funding, and whether it's internal. It's complicated because it's not straight government funding for the Arctic Council. We have layers. They hope to have it

Foreign Affairs committee  I have just a quick comment. Yes, I do know of it, and it's wonderful. I think that in Canada we forget we are so far ahead of technology in the Arctic. Their infrastructure hasn't caught up with us. It always happens. In World War II it was the Americans who had the technology

Foreign Affairs committee  On the cruise ships, yes, I've been on one as a resource person. It all depends on the cruise ship company and their sensitivity to the Arctic communities. Evidently, The World, which is an absolutely enormous ship—I think there's a picture, but maybe I took it out—landed at Camb

Foreign Affairs committee  I think the Arctic Council itself is dependent on its member countries to fund the council work. There was a breakthrough at the last ministerial meeting in that they actually have formed a permanent secretariat. They've just announced the director who is from Iceland. Hopefully,

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a great question. I'll try to answer succinctly. Resource opportunities and turning those resource opportunities into sustainable development for the people who are living there is going to be the basic challenge. It is something that we need to think of in the future as

Foreign Affairs committee  I agree totally. The day of the oil and gas lobbyists, the naysayers, is over, I hope. We have to treat adaptation to what we've got, basically.

Foreign Affairs committee  That's probably an hour's lecture. There is one image that shows that the warming in the Arctic is actually creating violent and uncharacteristic weather elsewhere. There is a chart, which you will eventually get, that shows that the warming in February last year in the Arctic co

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, it is. I'll qualify that because development of the resources in the Arctic is going to affect the partial transits of the Northwest Passage. As a through route, the transpolar is much faster and you don't get the temporary blockages of ice. The icebreaker that went through

Foreign Affairs committee  Absolutely.

Foreign Affairs committee  Correct. I believe the IMO must get a mandatory polar code that will cover all waters, not just our internal waters. Secondary to that, we have to get fishing regulations. The number of large factory fishing ships in and out of our Arctic, that's a huge increase in destination t