In the Post Millennial, Jason Unrau writes about the Canadian government’s largely unsupported claims to the Northwest Passage as Canadian territorial waters:
If Canada is serious about defending sovereignty over its Arctic archipelago, Ottawa needs to develop better infrastructure there and start with a permanent military base, says the only MP who attended the International Arctic Forum held in St. Petersburg, Russia.
“The conversation was that it’s international waters. From a Canadian perspective we lay claim to it, but the international community is really looking at it as international waters,” said David Yurdiga, Conservative MP for Fort McMurray–Cold Lake Alberta.
“There are plans to open up the Northwest Passage and connect it as part of international shipping lanes, as they call it … even the U.S. says it’s international waters.”
Canada’s jurisdiction over the waterway was last publicly questioned at the meeting of Arctic Council nations in Finland, where U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Canada’s claim “illegitimate”.
[…]
But back in the real world, nobody cares about Canada’s claims to our Arctic archipelago, except for us, said Yurdiga. And barely a month before Scheer and Freeland duked it out on Twitter, in St. Petersburg, according to Yurdiga, only department staff attended the International Arctic Forum – not MPs, nor ministers.
“I was really shocked there was no representative from the government,” Yurdiga said. “We have international communities talking about these as international waters, and we have nobody from the Canadian government pushing back on our sovereignty. We’ve got to be an active player.”
