Prime Minister Stephen Harper began his fifth tour of the Arctic on Monday by announcing $13.4 million in funding to upgrade the airport in Churchill, Man.

"Canada's regional and remote airports play a vital role in bringing us together as a nation and linking our communities to the world," Harper said at the event.

"This has to be a long-term project," Harper told reporters. "This is a sparsely populated, under-developed region for the country and it will require sustained investments and attention to take advantage of the opportunities that await it."

Situated on the shore of Hudson Bay, Churchill is being touted for its potential as a major transit point to the Far North. Federal money has also been earmarked to improve the city's ports and rail line.

Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger said new funding for the federally run airport will allow Churchill "to be a staging point for access to the entire north of Canada."

Harper flew to Churchill from Ottawa on Monday. It's the first stop on a five-day tour of the Arctic.

In the coming days he will visit the Nunavut communities of Resolute and Cambridge Bay, both of which lie along the Northwest Passage, before moving on to the Northwest Territories and the Yukon.

The trip comes amid growing international disputes regarding the northern archipelago, and the issue of Arctic sovereignty is expected to dominate Harper's tour.

Washington and Ottawa disagree over which country should control the Beaufort Sea. And both Canada and Demark lay claim to tiny Hans Island, which lies between Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

"There's a bit of controversy going on right now in the Arctic shelf, that's the northern part of the country," CTV's Richard Madan reported from Churchill. "The United States, Russia, Denmark are all laying claim to this area, obviously because they believe there are lots and lots of natural resources like oil buried deep beneath the sea floor."

In the latest incident, a cruise ship carried 64 Danish tourists to Hans Island earlier in August, according to Ritzau News Service, and they erected a cairn adorned with the flags of Greenland and Denmark.

Harper brushed off the Hans Island visit, saying "we have bigger fish to fry in terms of the long-term economic development of the North."

He also warned that protecting Canadian sovereignty in the region is becoming "more critical" as international interest in that part of the world grows.

"The Canadian Arctic is a vital part of our national identity, our sovereignty and our economic security," he said. "It is crucial that we continue to unlock the enormous resource potential of the North, while protecting our northern environmental heritage to preserve its rich natural beauty and ecological integrity for future generations."

In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said that asserting Canada's sovereignty in the Far North boils down to a "number of elements," such as increasing the military's presence, becoming more active diplomatically and mapping Canada's continental shelf.

"We want to be able to have a clean slate," Cannon said, referring to the ongoing territorial disputes in the Far North.

"These are issues that have been sort of shoveled forward for a number of years," he told CTV News Channel.

On Friday, Cannon announced the government was taking a new approach to the Arctic. In a document titled "Canada's Arctic Foreign Policy," the feds call for a "stable, rules-based region" where neighbours like the U.S., Russia and Denmark co-operate rather than compete.

It's a new approach for the Harper government, which hasn't shied away from confrontation over Arctic sovereignty in the past.

Last year, the government was quick to scramble fighter jets to the region as a way to discourage Russian aircraft from flying into Canadian airspace.

In 2005, the Conservatives campaigned on a platform that called for the purchase of three large icebreakers, the construction of a deep-water port and the establishment of a training centre for Canadian Forces.

While the government still plans to establish the port and build the training centre, the icebreaker plan has been replaced by smaller ships.

With files from CTV's Richard Madan and The Canadian Press