What Is Canada Doing?

"The mission is part of a race to assert rights over the area, which is rich in energy reserves."

And meaningless. Planting a flag is just a photo-op. It's commercial use that matters, in the new treaties with respect to the sea. If the continental shelf that Canada lies on is also under the North pole, then the North Pole belongs to Canada. Or Denmark. It's geology and commerce that trumps a shiny flag.

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If this titanium flag could be accepted as the "border marker" between Russia, the USA, Canada, Greenland and Norway, that would solve the boundary dispute between Canada and the USA in the Beaufort Sea.

Could the Canadian government, by proclamation, accept this and be done with it? Or am I too naive to think this is going to happen?

If I was a suspicious type, judging from the editorial tone of the full article, I'd say this appears to be a "false flag" story designed to put a red herring beneath the Arctic ice.

In the meantime, the Arctic sovereignty dispute of real significance for Canadians is the developing one between Canada and the US regarding the ownership of the burgeoning Beaufort Sea gas resources. Could talk about Russian assertiveness in the Arctic serve to dissemble the recent signing of an SPP continental energy accord effectively giving those resources to the US?

Moreover, at a time when Putin is being demonized in the American media, might it not dispose Canadians to believe our southern "cousins" will protect us from the nasty Russian bear? It's a story the American administration would love to have percolating when the "three amigos" get together in Montebello next month for their much-criticized (and secretive) SPP summit on the final phase of continental integration!

Note that this article was on a British website, not an American one. The recent issue of the guy that was supposedly poisoned does not help relations between Great Britain and Russia.