Canada to claim North Pole

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Canada signalled intentions to claim the North Pole and surrounding Arctic waters while announcing the filing of a UN application seeking to vastly expand its Atlantic sea boundary.

After a decade of surveying the country's eastern and far north seabeds and gathering supporting evidence, a claim was submitted to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf on Friday.

Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said the filing mainly concerns the outer limits of Canada's continental shelf in the Atlantic Ocean.

But it also includes "preliminary information concerning the outer limits of (Canada's) continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean," he said.

Russia and Denmark are also expected to file overlapping claims.

There are also expectations to overlapping claims in the Atlantic with the United States south of Nova Scotia. France also intends to file a submission in respect to its tiny islands in the northwest Atlantic.

Nations bordering the Arctic currently are entitled to a 200-nautical-mile economic zone from their coastlines, but claims for extending their territories are to be decided under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

In order to be successful, Canada must show that its continental shelf extends beneath the North Pole, which sits on a slope of the underwater Lomonosov Ridge.