Who Owns The Arctic?
 

Currently the Canadian government is appearantly increasing their military presence( :confused: ) in the Northwest Passage area of the Arctic.

Link being: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070709/...ouCI.3uFHMWM0F


Personally I have to find it humorous that there is so much conflict occuring now that the oil and et cetera is becoming more known to exist there. However, is there any actual validity behind what the Canadians are saying, which is that they own that spot of watery doom?

My opinion is that they do, indeed, have the rights to it as not only do they own most of the land up at the northern edge of North America, but they've been there for quite a while without anyone attempting to come into conflict with them. On top of that, waterways can be owned(See rivers, tolls on said rivers and so on and so forth). The fact that Canada has not overtly policed that area simply does not negate the validity of their claim, it merely shows that Canada is capable of sharing waterways for easy passage of others.

I actually heard (through my brother, so I have no article as proof) that Russia was claiming the North pole for the very same reason(s).

If this is true, then does that mean there may be a cold war between the Russians and Canada? Sounds interesting.

But moving on, how do they expect to get anything from up there anyway? Wouldn't the immense cold make it more than a tad difficult?

Canada has a military?

First I'VE heard of this.

Seriously Canada, you guys do know we have a battle plan all ready drawn out and good to go in the event we get to invade you dudes, right? You might have waited until we at least had a Democrat in office before you started the war-peen contest.

But seriously, it might help if the article was a bit more specific than "The Northwest Passage" as that is actually quite large.

And you did know Canada had a pre-emptive strike/counter-attack all planned out just in case you tried to invade us, right? In the words of the famous Red Mage Sosa:

Not to mention we have all our strongest athletes in ALL your major cities, trained to kill with hockey sticks since they were but children. We might be outgunned and outnumbered, but we have strategy on our side!

Seriously though, the arctic areas above Canada is ours. Don't mess with it.

EDIT: Here's a map of whats supposed to be Canada's borders. Clearly the passage belongs to Canada... just because we let everybody else pass through, it doesn't mean that the resources don't belong to us. And Major Blood, I'll have you know we Canadians have an incredibly well trained, albeit small and poorly equipped, military. In a naked fight to the death armed only with a knife, a Canadian soldier can take any other nationality out there I says.

I lol'd at that one.

And the area above Alaska belongs to the US, and the area above Russia belongs to Russia, and the area above Greenland belongs to Greenland. If we keep this in mind, we'll all get along. Otherwise, Greenland, Russia, and the US might say that there is evidence of WMDs in Canada and plan accordingly.

Seriously, though, whoever thought it would be a good idea to antagonize Canada regarding the Northwest Passage needs to stop now. The US can't afford to lose any more allies.

Actually, it was the UK who did that on August 24, 1814. Canada just happened to be the UK's friendly neighborhood colonies, and they were more than happy to help the UK stomp on the US.

Well I DID only demand the areas above Canada, which you might grant me is the lion's share of the passage.

Secondly, Canada is a known nuclear-capable state and the only reason we don't have WMDs is because we don't want them. Under NATO treaty, however, we're totally allowed. Canada has just as much authorization to nukes as the U.S.... we're just nicer and don't go for the hypocrisy of building weapons that we say other people shouldn't have.

Shush you. Canadians like to believe the victory was largely in part due to the efforts of locals and that British funding+Navy played a minor role.

(Yes, we know this isn't true, but allow us our delusions).

Doing a bit more research into this, us Canadians have been complain about the damn passage for quite a while now, as seen here in a CBC article from 2004. Funny that the government doesn't seem to have done anything about it until now, though.

We've actually claimed the Arctic ever since we've been drawing the maps. Whereas most people seem not to care. So officially, we've had it longest!

This was actually a source of discussion in one of my classes. Some people think that with the continuing loss of drinkable water, Canada should tap the North Pole for the largest water reserve possible. Then we can charge you all for water, and rule the world.

Of course, there's the entire moral dilemna about whether we want to start charging people for a basic necessity of life, but we all know that Canadian hearts are as cold as our winters.