Canada to Claim North Pole

Move sets up clash with Russia, Denmark
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 5, 2013 12:19 AM CST
Updated Dec 5, 2013 6:32 AM CST
Canada to Claim North Pole
This way north, eh?   (Shutterstock)

Santa better be a hockey fan—Canada is gearing up to claim the North Pole, along with a vast surrounding area of the Arctic, according to the Globe and Mail. The country is due to submit a territorial claim to the UN this week and sources say Prime Minister Stephen Harper has ordered government experts to work on a claim big enough to include the geographic North Pole, putting Canada in direct competition with Russia and Denmark for an area believed to include around a quarter of the world's untapped energy resources.

Canada appears to have a fairly solid claim to the region's seabed as an extension of its continental shelf, based on an undersea mountain range, an Arctic expert tells CTV. "If you look at what’s been coming out in terms of the science ... there’s no question that our claim or our submission should have included the North Pole and in fact gone substantially beyond the North Pole," he says. But any UN ruling on the issue is probably around 20 years away: Experts believe just checking the science on the Canadian claim will take several years. (More Canada stories.)

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