I didn't pick up on this subtlety. Really good point. Can I ask about the significance of 24 nautical miles? Assuming that's an international boundary condition between Canadian territorial waters vs. international waters?
Territorial waters extend 12nm from the coast. So if there's a path through that's more than 24nm wide, some part of it must lie outside of Canadian territorial waters, regardless of the status of the islands.
Yes, which was why my original comment distinguished between the right to bar shipping and the right to economically exploit.
Even if Canada prevails on ownership of every single Arctic island, a passage more than 24nm wide would mean supertankers could come through, and Canada would not be able to forbid it.
That's a claim which, from looking at a map, is unlikely to hold up; internal waters are lakes, rivers, and inlets which come further in than the baseline established by the coast.
The only exception I can find is for nations which are made up of an archipelago of islands, and Canada is not one. So again, so long as there's a wide enough route through the islands, it doesn't matter what country owns the islands -- the sea passage between them would be open to international shipping.
Just looking on google maps now, there is a chokepoint across the passage that has several islands - this makes a contiguous territorial water zone (as each island is within 20 google-map-miles), if Canada's claim to ownership of the islands is respected. I assume this is why the argument is on ownership of the islands rather than route of the path.
