As reported changes to the world's climate appear to be increasing the accessibility of the Arctic to international shipping, this ICS position paper is intended to establish some key principles with respect to the governance of maritime activity in the Arctic and the regulation of ships navigating Arctic waters.
Canada is a federal state, in which law-making powers of the central (federal) Parliament and of each of the ten provinces are exclusive and respectively sovereign, and are assigned to one or other of the levels of government essentially according to subject-matter. Most particularly, the power to make laws in relation to "navigation and shipping" is assigned exclusively to the federal Parliament, and scope of this power is interpreted to include matters of contract, tort and agency "integrally connected with maritime matters ... in the modern context of commerce and shipping".
Global warming has increased the potential for commercial shipping as the Arctic ice progressively melts. Canada maintains that the Passage is part of its internal waters and that no right of innocent passage exists within it, whereas the United States of America believes the Passage is an international strait where the right of transit passage exists.
