Rob Heubert worries about Canada's ability to control shipping in her northern waters: As the ice melts, control ebbs in the Arctic. Canada is ill-prepared for the challenge to our soverignty in an ice-free Northwest Passage (Globe and Mail, August 18).
Early interest in shipping through the Northwest Passage is more likely to be driven by oil and gas development than by Atlantic-Pacific freight traffic. There is a lot of oil and gas in the Arctic. New ship building technologies, and deteriorating pipeline economies (driven by melting permafrost and the increasing price of construction steel) make it more attractive to move it to market by tankers and LNG carriers.
People will want to move those ships through the northern straits between Canada's mainland and islands. Unfortunately:
Our Coast Guard's icebreaking fleet is small and aging; our search-and-rescue capability is based in the south; our navy has a very limited ability to go north; we require industry to provide for their own rescue capability; and we maintain almost no oil-spill response equipment in the North....
The government has promised to build new ice-capable patrol vessels and replace older icebreakers, but hasn't taken effective steps to do so yet. The current government hasn't followed up on the preceding government's preliminary efforts to "develop a comprehensive policy framework to control the Arctic effectively."
Time is running out.... Already, some foreign companies are beginning to resist Canadian efforts to control their activities.
Many Canadians know that in the early 1970s the Trudeau government enacted the Arctic Water Pollution Prevention Act. It was and is very strong legislation that sets strict environmental rules for ships in the North. But what Canadians may not know and may find disturbing is that, though the AWPPA looks powerful, ships entering the Canadian Arctic are asked to obey it on a voluntary basis.
Strictly speaking, all foreign vessels entering Canadian Arctic waters have to follow the rules in the AWPPA. But they do not have to tell Canadian authorities that they are entering these waters! Under the provision of the Arctic marine-traffic system (NORDREG), ships are not required to report. Until this year, almost all ships have been willing to do so. This has been largely due to the fact that, until they report, they cannot access Canadian reports on ice conditions. But in 2007 and 2008, two cruise ships, the Hanseatic and the Bremen, declined to report to NORDREG.... This is very troubling. Why they suddenly decided to do this is unknown. But it reminds the world that Canada does not have effective control. If NORDREG were mandatory, the government could have simply forbidden these vessels to enter our waters. Of course, it would have needed the ships to enforce the prohibition. Some of its icebreakers might have been in place, but given their currently small numbers, a element of luck would have been needed....
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