January 16, 2019 | Local, Naval
Murray Brewster · CBC News
A Quebec-based business association claiming to represent over 1,000 companies inside and outside the province is launching a high-profile campaign to convince the Liberal government to reopen the oft-maligned National Shipbuilding Strategy.
The group is demanding the federal government include the Davie shipyard, in Levis, Que., in the policy and plans to make it a major issue in the October federal election.
The Association of Davie Shipbuilding Suppliers, which has been around for about a year, represents companies that do business with the shipyard.
It plans an online campaign, beginning Thursday, and will lobby chambers of commerce as well as federal and provincial politicians.
It is hoping to use its extensive membership and thousands of associated jobs to put pressure on the government in an election year to direct the building of additional coast guard ships exclusively to the Quebec yard, one of the oldest in the country.
The shipbuilding strategy, conceived under the previous Conservative government but embraced by the Liberals, has turned into a giant sinkhole for federal cash with little to show for it, Simon Maltais, the association's vice-president, told CBC News.
"We can call it a boondoggle," he said. "It has been seven years in the making. At the moment, there is absolutely no operational ship afloat and working for Canada."
The Conservatives under former prime minister Stephen Harper chose two shipyards — Irving Shipbuilding of Halifax and Seaspan in Vancouver — as the government's go-to companies for the construction of new warships and civilian vessels.
The Davie shipyard was, at the time, emerging from bankruptcy, and under the strategy it only became eligible for repair and refit work on existing vessels and perhaps the construction of smaller vessels.
Irving and Seaspan have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in modernizing their yards and have just begun to produce new vessels.
The first Arctic offshore patrol ship for the navy is being outfitted in Halifax and others are in various stages of construction.
Three offshore fisheries science vessels, constructed in Vancouver for the coast guard, are undergoing repairs after defective welds were discovered last year.
The entire program has been beset with delays and rising cost estimates.
Last year, Public Services and Procurement Canada refused to release a revised timeline for the delivery of ships from Seaspan, including construction of a heavy icebreaker and the navy's two joint support ships.
Maltais said it makes no sense to keep excluding Davie from full-fledged ship construction work when much of the coast fleet is over three decades old and in dire need of replacement.
Refreshing the strategy would insure the federal government gets the ships it needs and Quebec companies "get their fair share" of the program.
"We know it's an electoral year and, yes, we want the federal government and the people in the election to talk about it," he said.
Maltais clams members of his association have been talking to federal politicians on both sides of the aisle in the province and they support the idea.
"They seem to be on the same page as us," he said.
Defence analyst Dave Perry, an expert in procurement and the shipbuilding program, said the political campaign has the potential to make the federal government uncomfortable, but he doubts it will achieve the objective of reopening the strategy to add a third shipyard.
"That would certainly be a major change in the strategy," he said. "There had been a view of doing something less than that."
The proposal being put forward by the association would not take any work from Halifax or Vancouver, but instead direct all new work, on additional icebreakers for example, to the Quebec yard.
Just recently, Davie was awarded a contract to convert three civilian icebreakers for coast guard use, but the association argues the need is greater.
The federal government did debate an overhaul of the strategy, according to documents obtained and published by CBC News last summer.
The size and scope of the "policy refresh" was not made clear in a heavily redacted memo, dated Jan. 23, 2018.
So far, nothing has taken place and government officials have insisted they were still committed to the two-yard strategy.
During the last election campaign, the Liberals pledged to fix the "broken" procurement system and invest heavily in the navy.
April 26, 2021 | Local, Naval
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, April 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- All 10 Provinces and one Territory were represented among the 680+ participants in Irving...
March 12, 2019 | Local, Security
Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press On a crisp day in early March, Tony Boemi looks out on the stacked shipping containers that stretch into the horizon of the 26 kilometre-long Port of Montreal. "We've been going up tremendously," the port authority vice-president says. Traffic at Canada's second-largest port rose nine per cent in 2018 to the equivalent of more than 1.6 million 20-foot containers for the fifth straight year of record volumes, prompting concerns the docks will be overloaded by 2022. Vancouver and Halifax, the largest and third-largest ports, respectively, also saw record container traffic last year. "I'd be lying if I said we weren't struggling with managing the sudden surge," Boemi says. Driving the boom is Canadian demand for clothing, appliances and other consumer products made in Asia, as well as a new free trade agreement with Europe. However, the surge in traffic comes with a downside: The additional containers present an opportunity for criminals to capitalize on limited law enforcement resources and hide more contraband among the legitimate goods. Bud Garrick, an investigator with Presidia Security Consulting and former deputy director-general of the RCMP's criminal intelligence service, said imported drugs and exported stolen cars constitute the biggest smuggling problem, with authorities nabbing only a small fraction of the spoils. "Marine ports are an attractive environment for individuals with ill means and mind to smuggle things into Canada," he said. "The amount of cargo -- shipping containers -- that moves in and out of ports is phenomenal...It's a magnitude problem." The criminal allure of ports is simple. Airports are under too much scrutiny, and air freight is costly. Overland smuggling does occur, but on a smaller scale. "Trying to intercept smuggled cargo at a port is expensive and disruptive, and you'll never have enough resources to catch most things through random screening," Peter Hall, an associate professor of urban studies at Simon Fraser University, said in an email. "Mostly 1/8the CBSA 3/8 focus on screening for terrorist and bio-hazards." A 2015 federal auditor general's report found that the Canada Border Services Agency "did not fully have the necessary authorities, information, practices and controls to implement its enforcement priorities and prevent the export of goods that contravene Canada's export laws." Just like legitimate trade, black market port activity works both ways. Incoming ships bring drugs such as cocaine and heroin, while outbound ships contain a growing number of stolen vehicles. "The most prolific is actually in Alberta," said Henry Tso, vice-president of investigative services at the Insurance Bureau of Canada. "A lot of the cars are being shipped from Alberta to various ports in Canada, mainly Vancouver." More than 25,000 vehicles were stolen in Alberta in 2018, part of a 50 per cent increase over the past five years that stems in part from overseas demand for high-end pickup trucks and SUVs. The thefts, which recent cases have linked to criminal organizations in West Africa, northern Europe, the Middle East and China, rely on human as well as technological flaws. "Certain docks, there are some you know are run by organized crime. Even in Quebec, like the Montreal ports, one terminal is clean, the other one is not clean," said Tso. "The major issue is corruption," said Anthony Nicaso, who has authored more than two-dozen books on organized crime. "There is no political will to fight organized crime," he said, "probably because money does not stink, so who cares -- money is money." Back at the Montreal port, Boemi estimates the CBSA thoroughly inspects about three per cent of containers that roll through the port. The CBSA declined to give statistics, but noted that screening devices such as gamma-ray detectors -- which sense radioactive material -- scan each container. "The CBSA requires marine carriers to electronically transmit marine cargo data to the Agency 24 hours prior to the loading of cargo at a foreign port. This requirement allows the CBSA to effectively identify threats to Canada's health, safety and security and take actions prior to cargo and conveyances leaving foreign ports," the CBSA said in an email. A Canadian Senate report from 2006 found that 15 per cent of stevedores and more than two-thirds of checkers who worked at the Montreal port had criminal records, along with more than half of the workers at an outside company contracted to pick up waste and maintain ships at the docks. In an effort to boost security, the Port of Montreal now requires that truckers with Transport Canada security clearance have their fingerprints scanned upon entry. The port and CBSA have signed on for a trial run of blockchain technology that aims to better secure and streamline freight shipping. Jean-Pierre Fortin, president of the Customs and Immigration Union representing some 10,500 CBSA employees, is not satisfied. "With stolen cars, with drugs, with guns, we need to increase our capacity to monitor this properly," he said. https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/port-of-montreal-busier-than-ever-creating-opportunities-for-smugglers-1.4330014
February 5, 2024 | Local, Security
“Today, United States Air Force (USAF) General Gregory M. Guillot took command of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (US NORTHCOM), replacing USAF General Glen D. VanHerck, during a ceremony held at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado.