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HALIFAX -- A Sea King helicopter on the Halifax-based destroyer HMCS Athabaskan has crashed into the sea off the coast of Denmark. A navy source tells Broadcast News that all five crew members on the chopper were rescued and apparently are in good health. The Athabaskan left Halifax on January 11th -- on a six month NATO mission. The Sea Kings have been a maintenance headache on numerous overseas missions, with frequent cancellations of sorties because of breakdowns. A number of the aging helicopters have crashed over the years, killing several crew members. The government is buying 28 Cyclones to...

TORONTO - Canada's next prime minister used his first news conference Thursday to tell the United States to mind its own business when it comes to territorial rights in the Arctic North. Testing the notion that he would kowtow to the Bush administration, Stephen Harper, whose Conservative Party won general elections on Monday, said he would stand by a campaign pledge to increase Canada's military presence in the Arctic and put three military icebreakers in the frigid waters of the Northwest Passage. U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins had criticized the plan Wednesday, describing the Arctic passage as "neutral waters." "There's no...

An unexpected Election Day, shaped by unexpected forces, could yield unexpected results for Canada—and the world. Canada’s January 23 elections were triggered when opposition parties coalesced to bring down the corruption-plagued government of Prime Minister Paul Martin with a no-confidence vote in late November. After trailing Martin’s Liberal Party for months on end, the Conservative Party recently surged ahead in polls, with a plurality of Canadians saying they favor the opposition party over the Liberal Party, which has been in power since 1993. But what’s just as intriguing is how these elections are being energized by something few people on...

Hans Island, the tiny Arctic island at the centre of Canada's war of words with Denmark over its sovereignty, is so barren that even the rocks used by soldiers to erect an Inukshuk needed to be flown in by helicopter, military documents show. When a small contingent of the Canadian Forces landed on the island in July on a sovereignty patrol, they also erected a 12-foot pole topped by a metal Canadian flag that had been specially designed and built at a cost of almost $2,000. Details of the secret three-hour mission -- code-named Exercise Frozen Beaver -- are contained...

Canada may be pulling back from overseas military commitments, but is planning to "flex its muscles" with an exercise on home soil by sending a warship, a squadron of helicopters and 200 troops to the high Arctic this summer. News of the operation was reported in Saturday's edition of The National Post. The military says the three-week long exercise has nothing to do with a brewing territorial dispute with Denmark over the ownership of a tiny island between Ellesesmere Island and Greenland. The operation, code-mamed Narwhal, is the first time the military will have a joint naval, air and land...

n ongoing border dispute between Canada and Denmark is heating up again following Defence Minister Bill Graham's secret visit to a frozen Arctic island north of Greenland. Last week, Graham set foot on tiny Hans Island, claimed by both Canada and Denmark. Graham said Canada had always regarded the 1.3-square-kilometre island as part of Canadian territory. His comments have caused a stir in Copenhagen and now Denmark says it will send a protest letter to Canada over the incident. Officials at the Canadian Embassy in Copenhagen declined to comment. Earlier this month, Canadian military personnel landed on the island, leaving...

The government has hardened its claims over a portion of the Far North after Canada's defence minister quietly set foot this week on a tiny Arctic island that has become the object of an ownership dispute with Denmark. Bill Graham took the extraordinary steps onto Hans Island on Wednesday in a symbolic move that helps to stake Canada's claim to the area when and if the dispute comes to a head. Military personnel landed on the island a week earlier, planted a Canadian flag and built an Inuit stone marker known as an inukshuk. The island is little larger than...

Breakup of Canada inevitable: Gagliano (click "Don" Alfonso's surname above to set appropriate "flavor") NATIONAL POST Tuesday, April 26, 2005 Canadian Press CREDIT: Dave Sidaway, The Montreal Gazette Alfonso Gagliano, onetime public works minister and former ambassador to Denmark. Former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano said Monday that Prime Minister Paul Martin has taken Canada and the federal Liberal party down the road to ruin. "He's going to destroy the party and break up the country,'' Gagliano said during an interview with Radio-Canada, the French-language network of the CBC. He said Quebec sovereignty is inevitable after the revelations at...

Several capabilities, one platform:The Joint Support Ship By Lt(N) H. Diane Grover When Prime Minister Paul Martin announced on April 14 a planned expenditure of $7 billion towards major capital purchases for the CF, it included one of the most innovative and transformational military acquisition any government has ever undertaken for the CF: The Joint Support Ship. The $2.1-billion project to procure three multi-role Joint Support Ships (JSS) will not only help transform the Navy, it will usher in a new way of conducting joint operations that will lead transformational change within the CF. The flexibility that is intended for...

May 11, 2004 WMD threat: PM SADDAM'S MISSING WEAPONS IN TERRORISTS' HANDS: MARTIN By STEPHANIE RUBEC, OTTAWA BUREAU, SUN MEDIA Prime Minister Paul Martin addresses a luncheon in Montreal. (CP PHOTO/Andre Pichette) Prime Minister Paul Martin says he believes Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and they've fallen into terrorists' hands. Martin said the threat of terrorism is even greater now than it was following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because terrorists have acquired nuclear, chemical and biological weapons from the toppled Iraqi leader. "The fact is that there is now, we know well, a proliferation of...

PRESIDENT BUSH: The Prime Minister and I will have some opening comments. We'll answer two questions per side. Mr. Prime Minister, welcome. I'm glad you're here. I've really been looking forward to this meeting because I view it as a meeting between friends and allies. I really appreciate the Prime Minister's clear vision about the world in which we live. He understands the danger of terror. He understands the opportunity of trade. And he understands that we share values that will -- that are so important, the values of freedom, human dignity. We care about the human condition. I appreciate...

Going to one of my favorite political toons Filibuster Cartoons, I spotted this comic along with an explanation. Canada has been invaded by Denmark. A Danish warship deployed troops to Hans Island, in the northern region of Canada, and stuck their filthy Danish flag in it. Apparently they consider it belongs to them, and not us, a la the Falkland Islands. The governments are saying this will not be an "international incident" but I am not so sure. Some Canadian politicians are already bemoaning that this is the inevitable result of our practically nonexistent navy. Read more about the crisis...