Canada Attacks!

In a development that will most likely make Sarah Canuck pee her pants in delight, Canada is asserting its territorial claims... In the Arctic!

Canada has boosted its presence in the Arctic, sending its navy back to the far north port of Churchill after a 30-year absence to bolster its territorial claims, officials said Thursday.

The visit by warships HMCS Shawinigan and HMCS Glace Bay to the former fur trading post set up in 1685 on the shores of the Hudson Bay, is the latest move to challenge rival claims in the Arctic by Russia, the United States, Norway and Denmark.

Warmer weather has triggered a melting of polar ice that is expected to reveal new shipping routes, including the famed Northwest Passage, oil and gas resources, and allow fishing.

"The ships that docked here have steamed roughly 2,400 nautical miles, all of them in Canadian territorial waters. This is the heart of the country. This is a demonstration of Canada's will to exercise sovereignty over our own back yard," Commodore Bob Blakely, commander of Canada's naval reserve, told AFP from Churchill.

"The sea is a highway that's open to everyone. We will allow everybody passage as long as they ask for our consent and comply with our rules: use our resources wisely and don't pollute the fragile northern ecosystem," he said.

Only Canada would send a two-ship flotilla to tighten its grip on thousands of square miles of ice. I have a very hard time believing that Russia, Norway, and Denmark are posing a severe threat to Canada's legitimate sovereign holdings. And the United States? Anything that's worth having in the Arctic is in Alaska already.

Canada's display of national sovereignty in this situation is roughly equivalent to Saudi Arabia taking harsh measures to conserve its fragile desert ecosystem. The only difference is that Canada's actually doing it!