QUEBEC—Finance Minister Bill Morneau and Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos offered hope on Friday that the Chantier Davie shipyard in Lévis, across the St. Lawrence from the provincial capital, would soon be busy working on federal shipbuilding contracts.
Chantier Davie is well-placed to be awarded contracts to build three new federal ferries and is also a contender to win contracts to refit Canada's 12 naval frigates, noted Duclos, who is also MP for Québec riding, taking in the city's core.
Morneau has been using a pause this week in Parliament to travel across Canada touting the benefits of the budget he presented March 19.
He was asked after his chamber of commerce speech about specific commitments for the Quebec City region, such as Mayor Régis Labeaume's proposed tramway and the repainting of the rust-marred Quebec Bridge.
“The money is there for the tramway,” Morneau said.
There is also federal money to repaint the bridge, the finance minister added. But negotiations are continuing with the province.
Asked about a proposal for more rapid, more frequent passenger rail service between Montreal and Quebec City, Morneau said, “We need to have more information.”
Then he added, with a smile, “If we had more Liberals MPs (from the region), that would make it easier.”
Last January, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau left his chamber of commerce audience in Quebec City cold, rejecting appeals to grant Davie a contract to build a new supply ship for the Royal Canadian Navy.
“The navy doesn't need a second supply ship now,” Trudeau said, in reply to representatives of Davie's union and representatives of nearly 900 companies in Davie's supply chain.
Chantier Davie, as Canada's oldest and largest shipyard has been known since a 2012 ownership change, is dependent on the boom-bust cycles of stop-and-go government contracts. In 2011, when the Conservative government was awarding billions of dollars in shipbuilding contracts, Davie, then bankrupt, was excluded, with all future navy and coast guard ships to be built by smaller shipyards, Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax and Seaspan in Vancouver.
In 2015, before the federal election, Davie proposed to the Conservative government of Stephan Harper that it convert a German container ship into a supply ship for the navy. Ottawa was in a jam then after Canada's two outdated supply ships had been scrapped and the navy was relying on the Spanish and Chilean navy supply ships. Davie delivered the Asterix supply ship on time and on budget in 2017.
Since that time, the company has been calling on Ottawa to order the Obelix, a twin supply ship to the Asterix for the navy.
On Thursday, visiting Conservative leader Andrew Scheer said if he was prime minister, the Obelix would go ahead, winning applause from his chamber of commerce audience. Scheer also endorsed the “third link,” Premier François Legault's pet project, the plan, which is yet to reach the planning stage, to build a third bridge or tunnel across the St. Lawrence.
Joël Lightbound, who with Duclos makes up the two-MP Liberal caucus in Quebec City, where the Conservatives dominate, deadpanned to reporters, “One more step and Mr. Scheer would have promised world peace and the return of the Nordiques.”
On Friday, it was the turn of the two Liberal ministers.
Asked by a reporter what commitments the Trudeau government was prepared to make for Davie, a major employer in the region, Morneau called Davie “important for our industry in Canada.”
Morneau suggested that if reporters spoke to Davie representatives at the luncheon, “You will see the smiles on their faces.”
Duclos added that Davie was “wrongfully harmed” by being excluded from the Harper government's National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy.
“There are things that the previous government did that our government cannot undo,” he added.
In helping Davie, the federal government agreed to its offer to convert three icebreakers, built for cancelled offshore oil-drilling projects, for the Canadian Coast Guard.
“You saw the three icebreakers we acquired a few months ago,” Duclos said. “The first icebreakers the government has acquired in 25 years.”
Frédérik Boisvert, vice-president of Davie and one of the Davie representatives at the chamber of commerce luncheon, said the ferry and frigate refit contracts have not been awarded yet.
But Davie is confident.
“We're extremely well-positioned,” he said. “You can quote me on that, given that the other two shipyards are at full capacity.”
The Morneau budget called for replacing the MV Madeleine, linking Quebec's Îles de la Madeleine with Prince Edward Island; the MV Holiday Island, running between P.E.I. and Nova Scotia; and building a new ferry for Marine Atlantic, linking Newfoundland to the continent.
“They have to be built in Canada,” Boisvert said.
“The two other shipyards are at full capacity so, logically, it's coming to us,” he said.
“Maybe (there will be) an announcement before the end of June.”
On the frigate refits, Davie is hoping to get contracts to refit at least four of the warships.
“Negotiations are underway, and they should be wrapped up soon.”
17 juillet 2024 | Local, Aérospatial, Sécurité
The Department of National Defence is actively considering whether to retire some older ships, planes and other items of equipment that have become too difficult and costly to maintain — including the aircraft belonging to the iconic Snowbird demonstration squadron.
23 novembre 2018 | Local, Aérospatial
CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA — The Trudeau government pressed ahead with its plan to buy second-hand fighter jets from Australia on Tuesday despite withering fire from the federal auditor general, who warned that the military might not have anybody to fly them. Six years after blowing up the Harper government's plan to buy new F-35s without a competition, auditor general Michael Ferguson targeted the Liberals' own attempts to buy jets. He first picked apart the government's aborted plan to purchase “interim” Super Hornets to bolster Canada's aging CF-18 fleet, and then its current plan to buy used Australian fighters. The government says those extra fighters are needed to address a shortage of CF-18s until a state-of-the-art replacement can be purchased and delivered — a lengthy process that will run through 2032, at which point the CF-18s will be 50 years old. But the auditor general's office arrived at a very different conclusion: The military doesn't need more planes because it doesn't even have the pilots and mechanics to operate what it already has. What it really needs, the office found, is more people. “The shortage of personnel in relation to technicians means that they don't have enough technicians to prepare and maintain the planes,” Casey Thomas, the principal auditor on the fighter jets study, told reporters on Tuesday. “And they have 64 per cent of the pilots that they need, so they don't have enough pilots to fly the planes. What National Defence actually needed was to increase its personnel.” The auditor general's report also flagged concerns that the government's plan to sink $3 billion into the current CF-18s and additional Australian fighters to keep them flying to 2032 won't be enough, as the money won't actually improve the aircrafts' combat systems. Without more money, which some analysts have suggested could mean hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars more, Canada's fighter-jet fleet will become even more obsolete, to the point where the plans might not be any use at home or overseas. Yet only a few hours after the auditor general's report was released, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced that the Liberals had signed a contract to buy the 18 second-hand jets from Australia. Officials have pegged the cost at around $500 million. Sajjan also said he had directed officials to look at options for upgrading the combat systems on the CF-18s and Australian fighters, which he acknowledged would mean investing more money into aging fighter jets. Missing from the announcement: Any new funding or other initiative to increase recruiting and retention of pilots and technicians. Instead, Sajjan said the government and military have already introduced several initiatives through the Liberals' defence policy last year, such as giving tax breaks to military personnel deployed on overseas missions, to give them reasons to stay. At the same time, the minister sidestepped questions about recruitment, saying the military can't reduce its standards for new pilots. He noted that commercial airlines are also facing a significant pilot crunch. Air-force commanders have previously said the current training system, which can only produce 115 new pilots each year, a fraction of whom are fighter pilots, is not fast enough to replace all those who move on to commercial opportunities. The subtext to much of the auditor general's report on Tuesday was the question of how Canada ended up in a position where the military will be flying fighter jets until they are 50 years old. The Liberals were urged early in their tenure to launch an immediate competition to replace the CF-18s. Instead they spent two years working to buy those stopgap Super Hornets before a trade dispute with the company that makes them, Boeing, saw the government move on to the used Australian jets. The Trudeau government insists that it was doing its due diligence, but critics — including numerous retired air force and defence officials — have accused it of trying to bend procurement rules to avoid buying the F-35. Yet even before the Liberals took the reins, the Harper government was having a hard time making any progress on buying new fighter jets. The Tories championed the F-35 before resetting the entire process in 2012. That move was prompted by Ferguson's first report, which accused defence officials of misleading parliamentarians about the stealth fighter's costs and various technical issues. National Defence later pegged the full lifetime cost of the fighters at $46 billion. “Lot of people had a hand in this,” said defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, adding that the worst part is there is no easy or obvious solution to what has become a very troubling situation for Canada and its military. “I think our fighter force is in trouble.” https://lfpress.com/news/national/liberals-press-ahead-with-second-hand-jets-amid-questions-over-who-will-fly-them/wcm/859a3329-9d8b-4856-af7f-5c8064e778e7
26 juin 2019 | Local, Naval
The 2019 Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) report has indicated that the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) programme will now cost C$69.8bn ($52.7bn) over 26 years. The previous report, 2017 PBO, estimated the programme would cost $61.8bn ($46.84bn). Canada plans to acquire a fleet of 15 new naval warships that will serve as the country's major surface component of maritime combat power. The revision in the total programme cost is a reflection of inflated costs due to construction delay and an increase in the size of the CSC. The break-up of the cost structure includes C$5.3bn ($4.01bn) in pre-production costs, along with C$53.2bn ($40.32bn) for production, and C$11.4bn ($8.64bn) in project-wide expenses. A major driver of costs is the increase in the displacement of the ship. The 2017 estimate was calculated on the basis of a 5,400t lightship weight, which was an estimate based on available designs for the CSC programme at the time. Following selection of the BAE Systems Type 26 Global Combat Ship design, the weight increased to 6,790t. This increase has significantly contributed to the C$8bn ($6.06bn) difference in the two project cost estimates. The updated plan cost includes project development, production, two years of spare parts and ammunition, training, government programme management, and upgrades to existing facilities. Irving Shipbuilding is the prime contractor of the surface combatant project. The company awarded a subcontract to Lockheed Martin Canada to design the CSC vessels for the Royal Canadian Navy. The Combat Ship Team responsible for design includes Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, CAE, L3 Technologies, MDA, and Ultra Electronics Maritime Systems. Construction of the first ship under the CSC project is scheduled to take place in the early 2020s. https://www.naval-technology.com/news/canadian-surface-combatant-project-found-to-cost-more-than-52-7bn/