16 janvier 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.
8 novembre 2023 | Local, Naval
Today, the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) celebrated its third Northern Affiliation ceremony between His Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Max Bernays and the Kitikmeot Region, in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut at Polar Knowledge Canada’s High Arctic Research Station.
8 mai 2019 | Local, Aérospatial
Matt Gurney One can only imagine the astonishment in Ottawa when a letter arrived from Washington, reminding the Canadian government that military procurement projects are about procuring military equipment, not creating Canadian jobs. I like to imagine flabbergasted bureaucrats reading the letter over and over, before finally putting it down, rubbing their temples and musing aloud, “Don't the Americans realize how things are done here?” They do, it seems. And they don't like it. On Monday, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute published a new report, “Catastrophe: Assessing the Damage from Canada's Fighter Replacement Fiasco.” The title tells you most of what you need to know about the tone of the report. Author Richard Shimooka recaps the long and embarrassing history of Canada's inability to properly replace our rapidly aging and slowly attritting fleet of almost-40-year-old CF-18 jets. The report mostly covers a story that's been oft-told, including here in the National Post. But it did break some news: apparently, Washington's frustration with Canada is boiling over, and it's not keeping quiet about it anymore. Shimooka recaps the long and embarrassing history of Canada's inability to properly replace our rapidly aging ... CF-18 jets Shimooka's report reveals the existence of two letters previously unknown to the public, sent last year by American officials to Canadian counterparts. The specifics of the complaints involve fairly legalistic and technical aspects of Canada's membership in the international consortium that helped finance the development of the F-35 stealth fighter. Suffice it to say that Canada, as a participating nation, gets access to a rock-bottom price for the fighter (meaning the same cost paid by the U.S. military) and Canadian firms have been part of the production of the planes from the very beginning. That's the deal. It's a pretty good one. But Canada wants a different deal. Specifically, it wants the same kind of deal it always insists on when buying military equipment from abroad. We want any foreign company we're purchasing equipment from to invest heavily in Canada, so that even a contract signed with a foreign supplier can be shown to have helped Canadian jobs, and the middle class, and those working hard to join it. Even this is only a second-best option, a procurement Plan B. Canadian politicians would much rather have stuff built in Canada by Canadians, no matter how much that ends up costing us in terms of cost overruns and delays. But when that's simply not possible, we'll settle for industrial offsets from foreign companies. You'll note that in the above paragraph on military procurement, there was very little emphasis on actually successfully procuring equipment for the Armed Forces. Ottawa is much too sophisticated for that kind of concern. The real action is in the jobs, the industrial benefits, the gigantic novelty cheques, the ribbon cuttings, the question period talking points and the partisan mailers crowing about all the money flowing to Canadian firms. That's what military procurement is really for, at least in the eyes of Canadian officials. That's why our national shipbuilding strategy was to first build out a shipbuilding industry and then build some ships, almost as an afterthought, when we could have bought them faster and almost certainly cheaper from an ally. The Americans, it seems, have had enough, and are threatening to pull the F-35 from consideration in Canada's upcoming program to select our next fighter. To their mind, Canada has already been offered an objectively good deal: access to one of the world's most advanced fighter jets at the same cost the U.S. military pays, and billions in industrial benefits. It's true that the F-35 program has been troubled, but most of those problems are now behind it. These jets are entering service in large numbers in the U.S. military and in allied forces, as well. The F-35 isn't perfect but it's available, now, and Canada has already paid the cost of entry to the club. Angling for a better deal than everyone else is getting, is a slap in the face to the Americans and all the other allied nations who are part of the process. Angling for a better deal than everyone else is getting, is a slap in the face to the Americans Now a cynic will say that it's just good business. There's nothing wrong with Canada trying to get the best deal for itself. In general, I have an open mind to this kind of argument. But Canada isn't a business. It's a country that has signed alliances and agreements with our democratic peers, theoretically in good faith. We have our own interests, to be sure, but we also have obligations. Canada's membership in the F-35 consortium does not obligate us to buy F-35s. We'd retain the industrial benefits even if we select another fighter. But certainly it obligates us to at least honour the agreement we've already made? The Liberals have never been keen on the F-35. Before the past election, they actually pledged to never purchase them, before realizing that that was an impossible pledge to keep if we actually intended to hold a fair and open competition to select the next plane. The prime minister himself once dismissively described the F-35 as a plane that didn't work, even as the United States was putting its first squadron into active service. Part of me wonders if the Liberals are deliberately structuring our selection process to make it impossible for the U.S. to sell us F-35s. That would certainly solve that particular problem for the Liberals. Alas, the more realistic answer is probably, as ever, the simplest one. The Canadian government is probably baffled that the Americans would object to us behaving as we always do. Military procurement in Canada isn't about procurement, or the military, or honouring our commitments to our friends. It's about political booty that can be flung around the country come election time. That's just the way we do things here. Why would that ever change? https://nationalpost.com/opinion/matt-gurney-is-it-any-wonder-the-u-s-is-steamed-at-us-over-our-fighter-jet-fiasco
30 mars 2022 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
BRUSSELS - Canada faces fresh pressure to increase its defence spending as the head of the NATO military allia...