[ql06] Re: PROPERTY: "Possession" and Canada's North
- From: Sheldon Erentzen <sheldon.erentzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: ql06@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2003 22:03:46 -0400
This is an interesting story. It's something I've never considered. I've
kept relatively abreast of the shrinking polar caps but hadn't given any
thought to the question of Canadian ownership of the north and how it
might be threatened. International law allows for control of waters a
certain distance from sovereign land. Is it a definite distance? With no
land or ice, does Canada have a legitimate claim to arctic waters? ( I
wouldn't think so.)
I like the part in the second article about the Chinese tourists just
showing up and taking pictures. It would've been surreal in such a
remote community to suddenly see Chinese tourists show up.
Ken Campbell -- LAW'06 wrote:
>We heard lots in Bruce Pardy's class (via the text book, of course)
>about the importance of actual possession. Control.
>
>Remember the "real estate" ads for plots on the Moon?
>
>Welllll... I've been following this little story for quite a while. The
>far, far north of Canada might as well be the Moon, in some instances.
>When you understand that basic principle of property, the reason the
>Canadian fed government is worried about this is clear.
>
>Without proper attention to details... You could see a new and funny
>looking shape for Canada on world maps in the future... After all, does
>Canada actually control the far north? When's the last time you visited
>Prince Patrick Island?
>
>Below are two news stories.
>
> 1. Canadian Arctic claims melt with the ice cap
> Edmonton Journal
> October 2 2003
>
> 2. Snowplow sinks sovereignty patrol
> Toronto Star
> Apr 22, 2003
>
>They are fascinating reads from a legal property perspective. And in
>terms of "global change."
>
>And the second one (the older story) is extremely well written, a wild
>read -- "Panama Canal North" ... shrinking Arctic ice pack... Chinese
>sailors snapping photos in Tuktoyaktuk... human flag poles... forcible
>relocation....
>
>Vive le Arctic Libre!
>
>Ken.
>
>--
>I do not want you Anglos to leave Quebec. Please stay.
>If you left, there would be no one to pick on...
>except the natives... and they have guns.
> -- Separatist Premier Lucien Bouchard
> (impersonator)
> Just For Laughs Festival, Montreal
>
>
>
>--- cut here ---
>
>Arctic claims melt with the ice cap
>
>Edmonton Journal
>Editorial
>October 2 2003
>
>
>News reports of a widening crack in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, off the
>coast of Ellesmere Island, offer a dramatic demonstration of global
>warming — and, less visibly, of the danger that higher temperatures pose
>to Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic.
>
>Right now, most of the worry focuses on the new hazards for navigation.
>Longer term, we need to think about a larger issue. The breakup of ice
>shelves is gradually making our Arctic waterways more accessible to
>international shipping and military patrols.
>
>Canada has long used the ice as a vital, cost-free asset in controlling
>commercial and military use of the far northern territory it claims,
>while protecting the fragile Arctic environment.
>
>Freighters travelling from Europe to Asia, which now use the Panama
>Canal, could save as much as 8,000 kilometres and 25 days by using the
>Northwest Passage. Trips from Asia to the U.S. East Coast, or from
>Europe to the U.S. West Coast, would be shortened.
>
>An ice-free Northwest Passage may become even more attractive in future.
>The Panama Canal may be too narrow for the next generation of tankers
>and container ships, and is vulnerable to military action or terrorism.
>
>The High Arctic also is gaining economic importance as a source of
>Alaskan natural gas, which could be moved by tanker. Until recently, the
>Northwest Passage has been navigable only from August through October,
>and little used because of floating ice.
>
>But that's changing, warns political scientist Morris Maduro of the
>University of Alberta in a recent paper: ``The Northwest Passage could
>be open for navigable passage, possibly year-round, within 10 to 15
>years.''
>
>>From 1978 to 1996, the area of year-round Arctic sea ice has shrunk by
>14 per cent. Meanwhile, freighters and tankers now are being built with
>more effective ice-breaking technology.
>
>As a result, Maduro believes, the Northwest Passage could soon be deemed
>a ``strait'' connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
>
>Under the long-standing doctrine of freedom of the seas, no country
>could deny passage through such a strait.
>
>``The United States . . . views the Northwest Passage as an
>international waterway that fits squarely within the customary and legal
>definition of a strait, and therefore freely open to the world's
>vessels,'' Maduro has written.
>
>
>Using the passage to move Alaskan oil or gas would create a potential
>hazard to a pristine environment. And use by military ships from other
>nations could diminish Canadian security.
>
>
>Our ownership of unoccupied islands in the Arctic Archipelago has never
>been seriously challenged. But Maduro believes that, too, could change.
>
>``In the face of possible navigation of foreign vessels across a
>3,500-mile ice-laden passage, where ships will — by convenience or
>necessity — need to stop, and where infrastructures need to be present,
>Canada would need to ensure it can demonstrate a greater presence and
>continuous administration than those of other countries.''
>
>Canada's northern sovereignty could be strengthened by building,
>occupying and using permanent facilities, and through more frequent
>patrols.
>
>Unfortunately, two submarines that were bought from the U.K. will not be
>re-fitted for that purpose before 2012.
>
>Maduro says Canada should appeal to the international community that the
>exceptional length of the Northwest Passage and its extreme
>environmental vulnerability merit some deference to Canadian authority
>beyond what normally would be associated with a strait, or international
>waterway.
>
>That concession won't easily be won. But it is worth pursuing.
>
>--- cut here ---
>
>
>Snowplow sinks sovereignty patrol
>Canada's ability to protect the North is compromised Global warming
>melting barrier of Northwest Passage
>
>MIRO CERNETIG
>QUEBEC BUREAU CHIEF
>Toronto Star
>Tue Apr 22, 2003
>
>
>MONTREAL— Charlie Michalski was dispatched to the High Arctic on a vital
>national mission. Take his trusty tool kit to an abandoned weather
>station 1,500 kilometres from the North Pole, where he was to start up
>an ice-encrusted snowplow and do his part for Canada's sovereignty.
>
>Deep snowdrifts were blocking the runway at Mould Bay on Prince Patrick
>Island, making it impossible to land a Hercules cargo plane laden with
>Ski-Doos for soldiers who were to spend a week skimming across the sea
>ice around the fabled and often deadly Northwest Passage.
>
>The mechanic toiled for days in the Arctic twilight on the machine's
>frozen innards. Finally, it grumbled to life and started to roll toward
>the runway. Then, kaboom!
>
>"(Master Cpl. Michalski) got the 'dozer started but on the way down to
>the runway it blew a piston rod," said Maj. Stewart Gibson, commander of
>Yellowknife's 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group, which oversees Arctic
>sovereignty patrols. "It died... I didn't have the funds to bring up
>military aircraft to repair the damage."
>
>The military was forced to retreat 500 kilometres south, to the
>inhabited and more easily accessible hamlet of Sachs Harbour on Banks
>Island, where a commercial runway was working. From that fallback
>position, a team of about a dozen Canadian Rangers — the soldiers, Inuit
>and Indians who patrol Canada's north to ensure sovereignty — Ski-Dooed
>the barren landscape in the first week of April, covering almost 1,000
>kilometres.
>
>The defeat received scant attention to the south, where the federal
>government was celebrating a win in another sovereignty challenge — the
>Quebec Liberal Party had trounced the separatist Parti Québécois in last
>week's provincial election. But experts warn that broken snowplow in
>Mould Bay raises another, equally serious question about Canadian
>sovereignty in the Arctic, where international pressure may be mounting
>to open the Northwest Passage to commercial shipping.
>
>"It may seem a bit comical, not being able to fix a snowplow," said Rob
>Huebert, an Arctic and sovereignty specialist at the University of
>Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies. "But this is a
>serious issue. The fact that something so minor as being unable to
>maintain one of our runways stopped a sovereignty patrol is evidence of
>how much we've ignored the North."
>
>For centuries, the High Arctic's year-round ice, legendary for tearing
>through ships' hulls, largely protected Canada's north from outsiders
>craving a fuel- and time-saving route across the top of the world. Even
>the super tanker Manhattan, in its 1970 transit of the Northwest
>Passage, suffered holes and the ignominy of needing a push from a
>Canadian icebreaker.
>
>But in an era of global warming, the ice may no longer be the barrier
>Ottawa has relied upon to protect Canada's sovereignty.
>
>Since 1970, the Arctic ice pack has shrunk by about 3 per cent every
>decade, according to Canadian Ice Service reports. It is also getting
>much thinner — down to two metres in thickness from three metres. Last
>December, the U.S. Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colo., reported
>the amount of ice cover is the lowest since satellite surveillance began
>24 years ago.
>
>"I'm no scientist, but everything I'm hearing indicates we are in a
>period where the ice is not holding the Northwest Passage in as tight a
>grip as it did in the past," said James Delgado, director of Vancouver
>Maritime Museum and author of Across the Top of the World: The Quest for
>the Northwest Passage.
>
>"There's now a longer season when it is navigable to shipping."
>
>That was evident three years ago, when Mountie Ken Burton piloted the
>RCMP's aluminum catamaran through the passage in 21 days. It never ran
>into a scrap of ice.
>
>The remarkable voyage didn't get much attention in Canada, said Delgado.
>But in Europe and Asia, where shipping companies could save fortunes
>using a northern route instead of the Panama Canal or a route around
>South America, "people really paid attention," he notes.
>
>Many governments in Europe and Asia share Washington's view that the
>Northwest Passage is an international strait, connecting two oceans and
>thus open to international traffic.
>
>"I believe that we'll see a challenge to our sovereignty within 10
>years," said Huebert.
>
>Challenges may already be happening. Officials talk about northern
>UFOs — unaccustomed floating objects — that attest to Ottawa's
>historically poor surveillance of the Arctic.
>
>Sailboats have been in the passage. A Russian tug used it to take a
>massive dry-dock from Vladivostok to Bermuda. Cruise ships see the trip
>as a potential boon for a troubled industry.
>
>Three years ago, residents of Tuktoyaktuk were astounded to find Chinese
>sailors in town, snapping souvenir photographs at the edge of the
>Beaufort Sea.
>
>"The voyage of the Chinese vessel demonstrated the limited Canadian
>surveillance capabilities," Huebert said. "Canadian officials did not
>learn of the vessel's entry into Canadian waters until it actually
>arrived."
>
>Increased shipping in the Arctic also raises the danger of a future
>environmental catastrophe — particularly if ships of poor quality with
>no experience in the perilous region try to make the passage.
>
>For most of this century, when the ice held firm, the Canadian
>government has relied on the Inuit as "human flagpoles" who can mark the
>country's sovereignty over the Arctic. A half-century ago, many were
>forcibly moved to the High Arctic to prove Canada used the region and
>people inhabited the ice pack.
>
>The Canadian military still enlists Inuit and other natives for
>sovereignty patrols and search and rescue missions.
>
>But if the ice continues to melt, and the Northwest Passage opens up,
>Canada will need to add a more high-tech surveillance component, from
>satellites to unmanned drones, if it wants the world to respect it as an
>overseer of the Arctic, says Huebert.
>
>It won't come cheap. Huebert thinks it could cost Ottawa $100 million a
>year to prepare for the years ahead, when the Northwest Passage might be
>rechristened Panama Canal North.
>
>"It's a lot of money," he said. "But if we do nothing, and spend after
>the Japanese or Europeans challenge us, then you might be talking $2
>billion to deal with the problem."
>
>
>
>
>
>
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