Canada getting more aggressive?

[Rolo]

Are canadiens getting more aggressive - maybe there is a Michael Moore movie in all of this?

Canada may be pulling back from overseas military commitments, but is planning to "flex its muscles" with an exercise on home soil by sending a warship, a squadron of helicopters and 200 troops to the high Arctic this summer.

News of the operation was reported in Saturday's edition of The National Post.

The military says the three-week long exercise has nothing to do with a brewing territorial dispute with Denmark over the ownership of a tiny island between Ellesesmere Island and Greenland.

The operation, code-mamed Narwhal, is the first time the military will have a joint naval, air and land force operating so far north.

Colonel Norris Pettis, commander of the Canadian Forces northern area, told The National Post that the operation is about "sending a message that this land is important to us...that we can put troops, and aircraft and ships, on the ground to respond to whatever we might be called upon to deal with."

Pettis said the "robust" military presence is a sign that Canada is "flexing our muscles" in the Arctic.

The Danish ambassador to Canada, Svend Roed Nielsen, has offered to negotiate with Canadian diplomats about the fate of Hans Island, a three-kilometre-long stretch of rock and ice in the Nares Strait.

Both countries claim ownership of the barren and uninhabited island.

"As far as Canada-Danish relations are concerned we have tried to keep this low-key [but] we have agreed to disagree," Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron told the Post.

A Danish warship sailed past Hans Island in 2002 and a group of soldiers disembarked and reportedly hoisted the Danish flag, an act Canada claimed was a violation of its sovereignty.

Canada has launched a five-year plan to increase its military presence throughout the Arctic, including satellite surveillance and far-reaching patrols of soldiers on snowmobiles.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/stor..._31/?hub=Canada



Last edited by Rolo at Mar 30 2004, 10:30 PM

[AM Jeff]

I didn't know they had a warship.
Hell even an Army for that matter.

[Rolo]

It gets more interesting...

Two proposals to steer icebergs from Canada's east coast to parched portions of southern Europe are raising questions about who really owns these frozen masses of freshwater, potentially worth millions of dollars each.

It's an untapped resource that one iceberg expert says could again put Canada on a collision course with Denmark, which is already contesting this country's ownership of tiny Hans Island, situated between Ellesmere Island and Danish-controlled Greenland.

Arctic icebergs typically break free from ice shelves in Greenland and drift west and south along the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. It was a mountain of ice tracking that route in 1912 that doomed the Titanic.

http://www.canada.com/calgary/calgaryheral...3a-ae3b11d102e0

[Rolo]

Sounds like Canada is fighting for water AND trade...

And with global warming making the northwest passage through Canada's Arctic navigable for longer stretches every year, he said we will need a naval capability in the North very soon.

"Within 10 or 15 years the passage could be open year-round," he said. "It has the potential to become a super-highway for shipping between Europe and east Asia."

Exercise Narwhal will cost an estimated $5-million and the logistics of transporting and supporting so many soldiers, sailors and airmen to such an isolated area will be formidable, Col. Pettis said.

"It's going to be a challenge just getting them here," he said. "It's just a few hundred kilometres from Iqaluit, but there aren't any roads. So it's an achievement just getting them where they're supposed to be going."

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpos...30-0355a20a272f