Canada acquires submarines to chart Arctic claimsThe Canadian government has taken delivery of two remote-controlled submarines which will be used to document its territorial claims in the Arctic Under international law, no country currently owns the North Pole or the region of the Arctic Ocean surrounding it. The five surrounding Arctic states, Russia, the United States (via Alaska), Canada, Norway and Denmark (via Greenland), are limited to a 200 nautical mile (370km) economic . "Canada is the first country in the world to use this type of technology" to map the Arctic, John Weston For the British businessman, see . Sir John Weston KCMG (born 1938) is a retired British diplomat. He was the UK Permanent Representative on the North Atlantic Council (NATO) from 1992 to 1995, and the British Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) from 1995 to 1998. , a member of parliament, said at a ceremony in Vancouver Tuesday marking the delivery. The unmanned submersibles built by Submarine Engineering of Port Coquitlam, British Columbia Port Coquitlam is a city in British Columbia, Canada. Located 27 km east of Vancouver, it sits at the confluence of the Fraser River and the Pitt River. Coquitlam borders it on the north, the Coquitlam River borders it on the west, and the cities of Maple Ridge and Pitt , will operate under the Arctic ice to gather data on the outer limits of Canada's continental shelf. Delineating the continental shelf in the Arctic is important because it would help Canada establish its rights under international law to natural resources in the Arctic ocean Arctic Ocean, the smallest ocean, c.5,400,000 sq mi (13,986,000 sq km), located entirely within the Arctic Circle and occupying the region around the North Pole. beyond the 200 nautical mile limit. Ottawa has until 2013 to present its case under the UN convention on the law of the sea. The Arctic is an immense, potentially energy-rich region that could become more accessible in an age of global warming global warming, the gradual increase of the temperature of the earth's lower atmosphere as a result of the increase in greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution. . That has made it the object of rivalry between the five states that border it -- the United States, Russia, Norway, Canada and Denmark. 
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