OTTAWA -- The United States recognizes Canada's claim to resource rights in the Northwest Passage, the U.S. ambassador to Canada David Wilkins said Wednesday.
At the same time, Wilkins reiterated the U.S. insistence -- stated by President George Bush on Tuesday -- that Canada does not have exclusive shipping or navigational rights through the passage, which the U.S. considers an international waterway.
That does not mean, said Wilkins, that Canada doesn't have sovereignty over both the Arctic archipelago surrounding the Passage and the resources in the sea and beneath it.
(...)
Wilkins also said he had no problems if Canada militarized its Arctic islands.
See, "Liberals" and other left-wing political parties? When you don't say nasty, unfair things about our best friend America and her President, they will reward us by being reasonable and backing us up on stuff for which we could use backing. (Saying nice things instead about Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Hu Jintao, Vlad Putin, etc., like you self-labelled "progressives" do, will only get Canada so far!)
Apparently our leaders this week at their summit were discussing substantial issues that really matter. Where's the evidence that they're planning a "North American Union"? If there ever was some secretive shared desire to move towards that sort of thing, perhaps now there isn't any longer, thanks to the widespread, multi-ideological opposition thereto by the people.
I welcome America's reasoned approach to the question of Arctic sovereignty. I have no problem with American vessels sailing through Canadian waters at all, as long as said vessels aren't up to anything illegal and pose no threat whatsoever to my country's security or sovereignty.
And America's recognition of Canada's Arctic sovereignty bolsters our claim with respect to Russia's and Denmark's competing claims.
After all, Canada has been (and still is) using and operating in the Arctic region, certainly within her indisputable borders (which extend quite far up and wide in the North), for as long as she has existed as a sovereign nation. I know this, as my father, as a young man in the Canadian Coast Guard, was once stationed in the North as a radio shack operator as part of a joint US-Canada operation shortly following World War II (I still marvel at the pics he took of ex-WWII Mosquitoes he saw when he was there). Plus, one of my brothers, while in the Canadian Air Force, was once stationed very close to the North Pole at Canadian Forces Base Alert, on Ellesmere Island, which, at least then, was the 'northernmost station in the world'.
So make no mistake: that which is Canadian territory is Canadian territory, period.
