Canada to stake claim of sovereignty on North Pole

Baird said Canada's submission last week set out the potential outer limits of the country's continental shelf in the Atlantic—a claim of about 1.2 million square kilometers. He said that's roughly the size of Alberta and Saskatchewan combined.

Canada's follow-up submission will include a claim to the Lomonosov Ridge, an undersea mountain range between Ellesmere Island, Canada's most northern land mass, and Russia's east Siberian coast. That claim would extend Canada's claim 200 nautical miles beyond the North Pole.

The submission that Canada filed with the U.N. is essentially a series of undersea co-ordinates that map what the government claims is the country's extended continental shelf.

Baird said it's a mammoth task, and the government needs more time to complete the mapping in the Arctic and get its U.N. submission right.

“That's why we have asked our officials and scientists to do additional and necessary work to ensure that a submission for the full extent of the Continental Shelf in the Arctic includes Canada's claim to the North Pole,” he said.

The U.N. submission is also political, said Michael Byers, an expert on Arctic and international law at the University of British Columbia.

“(Harper) does not want to be the prime minister seen publicly as having surrendered the North Pole, even if the scientific facts don't support a Canadian claim,” Byers said. “What he's essentially doing here is holding this place, standing up for Canadian sovereignty, while in private he knows full well that position is untenable.”