Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/139409
shipbuilding s Jean-christophe boucher is an assistant professor of Political Science at Dalhousie University. He is a Research Director at the Centre Interuniversitaire de recherche sur les relations internationals du Québec et du Canada and a fellow at the Center of Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University. BuIlD In canaDa Much ado about nothing HMCS Ville de Québec. Photo: Pte Dan Bard I n October 2011, the Harper government announced with great fanfare that Canada had finally selected, after a year-long process, the two shipyards that would build the new ships for the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and the Canadian Coast Guard. Marketed as a historic moment by the government at the time, the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy (NSPS) is a mammoth procurement program that will in theory supply Canada with approximately 28 ships at a cost of $33 billion dollars. For the RCN, this project would comprise 15 Canadian surface combatants (CSC) to replace the 12 Halifax-class frigates and three Iroquois-class destroyers, two to three joint support ships (JSS) to substitute for the two Protecteur-class oiler replenishment vessels, as well as six to eight Arctic offshore patrol ships (AOPS), which would be a new capability for the RCN. Certainly, the NSPS has been marred with difficulties, which merit ample debate and discussion. There is, however, one particular debate that needs to be discarded rapidly: whether the Department of National Defence should procure its vessels offshore or, to the contrary, build them in Canada. This question has generated some notable attention lately, especially with the publication of two reports: the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) on the acquisition of the JSS, and the Jenkins Report on leveraging defence procurement in Canada, as well as recent media coverage. To be sure, building the RCN's future fleet at home will cost more in the immediate term to Canada. It is unclear how much more, but various estimates fluctuate between 15 to 30 percent. Hence, for a procurement strategy of $33 billion, building at home could cost Canadian taxpayers between $5 and $10 billion dollars. The reasons for the "Canadian" premium are quite simple. First, Canada has limited military shipbuilding capacity to call our own. Our last experience was 20 years ago when we built the 12 Halifax-class frigates for the RCN. Thus, the NSPS is essentially creating that capacity from scratch, with of course the added cost of training the workforce and building the appropriate facilities in the shipyards to support the procurement strategy. www.vanguardcanada.com JUNE/JULY 2013 39