Hint, hint...

Feds need to expand Arctic sovereignty efforts: premier - Vancouver Sun

NWT Premier Floyd Roland took the opportunity to promote the MVP project at the annual gathering of the western Canadian premiers. Among its other benefits, it will improve Canada's claims of northern sovereignty.

This is true, of course, and the economic benefits are important, but where Roland begins to "jump the shark", if you will, is when he raises the spectre of an Alaska Highway project taking the lead. He raises the threat for an obvious reason: he wants Canada's federal government to support the MVP the same way that the US government has supported the Alaska project.

That the Alaska project will pull ahead is unlikely; the MVP is considerably further along in the permitting process (and in fact will get the final word from the National Energy Board within the next two months), so this feels a bit like an empty threat.