Canada’s government has laid claim to the North Pole. Recently, Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird has made a statement that revealed that the claim to Arctic territories of 1.2 million square kilometers will be submitted to the UN Commission. Thus, Canada joined the territorial disputes between Arctic neighbors, including the United States, Denmark, and Russia. The dispute will be resolved in a simple way: in case Russia proves that Lomonosov and Mendeleev Ridges are a continuation of the Eurasian landmass, it will get the shelf. If Canada will be able to bring irrefutable evidence that these elevations are actually a part of the North American continent, the shelf will belong to it. In response to Ottawa actions, Moscow took a radical decision and asked the Defense Ministry to increase the country's military presence in the region. John Baird said the government had asked scientists to work on a submission to the United Nations arguing that the outer limits of the country's continental shelf include the pole. Today, there is no clear understanding on how to solve this issue. The legal status of the Arctic Ocean is regulated by the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. European and Asian countries are interested in expanding their presence in the Arctic. Thus, China launched its program on Arctic development and started building a powerful icebreaker fleet. It is an interesting fact that Canada spent $200 million on search for scientific evidence of its right to own the North Pole.
