By ROB GILLIES TORONTO - Canada's prime minister began a three-day trip to the Arctic on Wednesday in an effort to assert sovereignty over the region a week after Russia symbolically staked a claim to the North Pole by sending submarines.

By DIRK MEISSNER ESQUIMALT. B.C. (CP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he's modified an election promise to use big ice breakers to protect Canada's sovereignty in the North with a new plan to employ smaller, but more versatile, ships.

By ROB GILLIES TORONTO - Canada announced plans Monday to increase its Arctic military presence in an effort to assert sovereignty over the Northwest Passage - a potentially oil-rich region the United States claims is international territory.

After decades of virtually ignoring its remote, frozen Arctic lands, Canada is belatedly trying to assert its sovereignty over a gigantic region rich in mineral resources.

OTTAWA (CP) - The federal government is looking up - way up - to assert Canada's increasingly threatened claim to Arctic sovereignty.