Below are some extracts from the analysis of the Canada-France maritime
boundary in the American Society of International Law's authoritative
series "International Maritime Boundaries". As far as the long-running
boundarypoint discussion on this boundary is concerned, the key comment
is at the end of the first paragraph: "Turning points 4 and 5 are fixed
on the low-water marks of Canadian islets in the Little Green Island
group, a rather unusual feature for a maritime boundary. These islets
are the westernmost of the Canadian offshore features." This suggests to
me that while there is land territory immediately on one side of the
boundary, there is no actual land boundary....
When I get an opportunity, I will have a look through Peter Beazley's
technical report (published in Vol. 31 of International Legal Materials)
and see if he has any comments on relationship between the boundary and
the Little Green Island group.
Regards,
m a r t i n
EXTRACTS FROM INTERNATIONAL MARITIME BOUNDARIES
There are quite a number of islets, rocks, drying rocks, banks, and
shoals in the boundary area. Most of the offshore features used as
basepoints for measuring the boundary are rocks, although turning points
1, 2, and 3 are, on their west, measured from a French islet, L'Enfant
Perdu. In general, when a boundary turning point is determined on the
basis of equidistance from the respective basepoints, that basepoint
closest to the boundary on the French side has been chosen, while the
nearest Canadian basepoints have been ignored. An exception are the
Outer Miquelon Rocks, about 4 n.m. west of turning point 7, which were
ignored in determining the point's location. Turning points 4 and 5 are
fixed on the low-water marks of Canadian islets in the Little Green
Island group, a rather unusual feature for a maritime boundary. These
islets are the westernmost of the Canadian offshore features.
Banks and shoals were ignored as basepoints in the delimitation. Since
the drying rocks on both sides of the line are located within the
respective territorial seas, they could, legally, generate their own
territorial waters, and thus would qualify as potential basepoints for
determining the boundary. No islets were ignored in the delimitation
except for Canada's Green Island, a part of the group of islets near
Points 4 and 5, which was disregarded because it would have exercised a
disproportionate effect on the boundary.
*****
To deal with technical difficulties, as mentioned at the outset, the
Court of Arbitration appointed as its expert Commander Peter Beazley of
the United Kingdom. In his Technical Report to the Court, Commander
Beazley explained that all computations were made on the ellipsoid using
North American Datum (1983), the associated ellipsoid being that of the
Geodetic Reference System (1980). The International Nautical Mile of
1852 meters was used. Positions of relevant basepoints were taken by
the expert from Canadian charts, with corrections supplied by the
Canadian Hydrographic Service, and all coordinates were expressed to 0.1
arc seconds. 71 The line of delimitation was illustrated on the
largest-scale chart of the area available, Canadian Chart No. 4490.
The first technical problem noted by Commander Beazley in his report to
the court was that the coordinates listed in the Agreement between
Canada and France of 27 March 1972 were expressed only to the nearest
arc second. While the Canadian Memorial had applied datum corrections,
the French pleadings had not assigned coordinates to either point 1 or
point 9, the terminal points of the agreed delimitation (in the channel
between Newfoundland and St. Pierre and Miquelon) and consequently the
starting points for the delimitation by the Court of Arbitration.
Further, point 1 as described in the 1972 Agreement and corrected for
datum change, did not lie exactly on a 12 n.m. arc centered on L'Enfant
Perdu. The expert therefore assumed that, had the coordinates been
given to the nearest 0.1 arc second back in 1972, they would have been
slightly different.
With respect to the enclave, as regards basepoints on St. Pierre and
Miquelon, while the French Memorial listed the coordinates of an
equidistant line, the controlling basepoints were only named and their
coordinates not given. The Canadian Counter Memorial did give
coordinates for the basepoints used by Canada for the French islands,
but a comparison with the French equidistant coordinates showed that the
two parties could not be using identical points. Commander Beazley
observed that "[t]his is only to be expected from the scales of the
charts even if the features used were the same." Therefore, he
determined his own coordinates of the basepoints for the French islands,
although the coordinates differed only slightly from those given by
Canada.
Other problems for Commander Beazley arose in the context of determining
the corridor, which, it will be recalled was to extend "to a distance of
1988 nautical miles from a 12 nautical miles limit measured from the
baselines" on St. Pierre and Miquelon. The western and eastern limits
of this projection were determined by the extremities of the French
islands, and the expert had to determine the distance between the
meridians passing through these points at their mean latitude. Also,
the limits described by the court for the lateral boundaries of the
corridor were actually "small circles" and were neither geodetic lines
nor rhumb lines. A geodetic line was a closer approximation, but
because positions were given to the nearest 0.1 arc, it was necessary
for the expert to determine two intermediate points along each limit in
order to reduce the divergence of the geodesics from the small circles.
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Martin Pratt
Director of Research
International Boundaries Research Unit
Department of Geography
University of Durham
South Road
Durham DH1 3LE
United Kingdom
+44 (0)191 374 7704 (direct line)
+44 (0)191 374 7702 (fax)
m.a.pratt@... (email)
http://www-ibru.dur.ac.uk (World Wide Web)
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