IT'S ALL ABOUT OIL AND GAS

It's a small step for the taxpayer but a huge leap toward settling the issue of Canada's bid to settle its sovereignty over millions of square kilometres of Arctic and Atlantic Ocean seabed. Ottawa will invest $40 million over four years in an attempt to prove the North American continental shelf extends far beyond Canada's 200-nautical-mile limit.

Canada has until 2013 to make a case to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that it ought to be granted jurisdiction over the extended continental shelf, off the northeast coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada's high Arctic and in a wide crescent off the east coast. Other polar countries, including the U.S., Russia and Denmark, are also trying to prove their claim to some of the same area.

At stake, Billions of dollars in potential oil and gas reserves. Too bad the feds could not have seen fit to invest more in fisheries science to protect the resources that swim in those eastern waters and supported hundreds of outports.