But most Canadians do live within one hundred miles (160 kilometres) of the border, and are more obsessed with US trade and culture than a dwindling scientific and military presence in the North. For most, the Arctic remains an imagined place far from their daily realities. “We are not an Arctic nation, except in a mystical sense, as part of our greatness by extension, our grandeur as a people. We still don’t go there,” says Franklyn Griffiths, professor emeritus of political science and the George Ignatieff Chair of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto. “We are anaesthetized to it, except when it comes to reading coffee-table books and seeing beautiful pictures.”
As global warming continues, and the ice bridging the islands of the Arctic Archipelago begins to melt, a viable Northwest Passage may become a distinct possibility. At the same time, international interest in the region’s oil and gas reserves is growing.
Ottawa’s problem is that under international law, a strait is defined by two criteria: one geographic and one functional. The former criterion states that a strait must link two separate international bodies of water. The Northwest Passage, running between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, would almost certainly meet this criterion once the ice recedes. The latter criterion states that international ships have to be using the channel. If Canada wants to claim the passage as an internal waterway, it will have to demonstrate that it has control over international shipping in the area, a task that will become increasingly difficult as the ice in the region continues to melt and more ships arrive.
The day of reckoning may be closer than many Canadians believe. According to the Canadian Ice Service, ice coverage in the eastern half of the Archipelago decreased by 15 percent between 1969 and 2004, and in some parts of the Western Arctic it shrank by a startling 36 percent. A study published in August by the Swedish Geophysical Society reported that the warming trend had accelerated since the 1990s, with 2002 marking the lowest ice cover on record.
That same year, the St. Roch II, an aluminum-hulled rcmp patrol boat, glided through the strait on a commemorative journey honouring the original St. Roch. The ease with which the St. Roch II was able to navigate the once-deadly passage is seen as further proof that a coming wave of international shipping through the archipelago is inevitable. The opening of the Northwest Passage could be the most significant change to ocean transportation since the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. It would shave five thousand nautical miles off current routes between Europe and Asia, points out Rob Huebert, associate director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. The passage’s deep waterways would provide two ideal routes for massive super tankers too big to cross the Panama Canal, and are currently forced to round the southern tip of South America to reach Asia.
To date, the majority of new shipping activity in the Arctic involves cruise ships. But the relentless push by international shipping companies to find cheaper routes, combined with US insistence on its right to freedom of navigation around the globe, could mean an increasing number of foreign ships will ply the passage uncontested, leaving Canada to grapple with search-and-rescue and environmental fallout. “The problem is very significant,” says Huebert. “The heart of the dispute over the passage is the transit of international shipping and who gets to set the rules.”
The rules for Arctic shipping were unofficially established by the US in 1969 when the 114,000-ton super tanker, the Manhattan, pushed through the strait to test the feasibility of transporting oil through the Arctic. In 1985, the Polar Sea, a US Coast Guard icebreaker, made the crossing without asking Canada’s permission, prompting Joe Clark, then minister of external affairs, to restate Canada’s sovereignty over the archipelago in a parliamentary decree. His government also pledged to build new icebreakers as well as spend up to $12 billion on a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Both plans were eventually scrapped.
The Polar Sea crossing also triggered a major diplomatic push. In 1988, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and US President Ronald Reagan signed the Arctic Co-operation Agreement, just three years after they sang together on stage at the Shamrock Summit in Quebec City. The agreement allows the US Coast Guard to use the passage after notifying Ottawa, but Canada in turn cannot deny the Americans access. The president also refused to include the US Navy in any agreement regulating Arctic waters.
Now, the Pentagon is looking north again with an eye to constructing a missile-defence shield across the Arctic. At the same time, successive budget cuts have debilitated the Canadian military. Its once internationally recognized prowess in cold-weather warfare is now almost non-existent. Stretched to the brink with competing international commitments, most Canadian soldiers are now more familiar with places like Afghanistan than the Arctic.
Canada’s token presence in the North consists of Canadian Forces Northern Area Headquarters in Yellowknife, with a staff of 150, and two smaller detachments in Whitehorse and Iqaluit respectively to cover a four-million-square-kilometre territory. The navy has no ships with ice-breaking capability, and air patrols occur only a few times a year. Surveillance of the region is left to five Coast Guard icebreakers, scattered rcmp detachments, and 1,400 Inuit Aboriginal Rangers, still equipped with vintage Second World War rifles.
