"They met a Russian aircraft that was approaching Canadian airspace, and as they have done in previous occasions they sent very clear signals that are understood, that the aircraft was to turnaround, turn tail, and head back to their airspace, which it did.
"I'm not going to stand here and accuse the Russians of having deliberately done this during the presidential visit, but it was a strong coincidence." [17]
Russia has routinely flown such patrols over the Arctic Ocean, the Barents and North Sea and off the coast of Alaska since the autumn of 2007. Moreover, depending on where in the Arctic the Russian bomber was at the time, it may well have been 6,000 kilometers from Ottawa, thereby posing no threat or constituting a warning to either Obama or Canada.
Prime Minister Harper echoed MacKay's tirade with:
"I have expressed at various times the deep concern our government has with increasingly aggressive Russian actions around the globe and Russian intrusions into our airspace.
"We will defend our airspace, we also have obligations of continental defence with the United States. We will fulfil those obligations to defend our continental airspace, and we will defend our sovereignty and we will respond every time the Russians make any kind of intrusion on the sovereignty in Canada’s Arctic." [18]
After Russia announced that it planned to have a military force available to defend its interests in the Arctic by 2020 - eleven years from now - Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon followed the lead of his predecessor and current Defence Minister MacKay and Prime Minister Harper and said, "Let's be perfectly clear here. Canada will not be bullied.
"Sovereignty is part of that (Northern policy). We will not waiver from that objective. Sovereignty is uppermost for us, so we will not be swayed from that." [19]
Cannon left it unclear in which manner Russia had questioned his country's sovereignty, except perhaps by not gratuitously ceding it the Lomonosov Ridge, though if Cannon had bothered to read US National Security Directive 66 he would have received a blunt introduction to the genuine threat to Canada's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
It will be seen later how Canada has matched the action to the word.
Control Of World Energy Resources And NATO's Drive Into The Arctic
A U.S. Geological Survey of May of 2008 on the Arctic "estimated the occurrence of undiscovered oil and gas in 33 geologic provinces thought to be prospective for petroleum. The sum of the mean estimates for each province indicates that 90 billion barrels of oil, 1,669 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 44 billion barrels of natural gas liquids may remain to be found in the Arctic, of which approximately 84 percent is expected to occur in offshore areas." [20]
"The unexplored Arctic contains about one-fifth of the world's undiscovered oil and nearly a third of the natural gas yet to be found....The untapped reserves are beneath the seafloor in geopolitically controversial areas above the Arctic Circle." [21]
Four days ago Science magazine published a new US Geological Survey study that "assessed the area north of the Arctic Circle and concluded that about 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil may be found there, mostly offshore under less than 500 meters of water. Undiscovered natural gas is three times more abundant than oil in the Arctic and is largely concentrated in Russia." [22]
The full report is only available to subscribers, but the Canadian Globe and Mail provided this excerpt: "Although substantial amounts as may be found in Alaska, Canada and Greenland, the undiscovered gas resource is concentrated in Russian territory, and its development would reinforce the pre-eminent strategic position of that country." [23]
In addition to estimating that the Arctic Circle contains 30% of the world's undiscovered natural gas, the survey increased its figure for potential oil there from 90 billion barrels last year to as many as 160 billion in this year's report.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
