Chronicle-Herald - August 15, 2009
By Colin Kenny
I have an idea that would provide a continuous stream of replacement ships for Canada’s Navy and Coast Guard, while assuring a steady supply of good jobs and well-trained workers at Canadian shipyards.
It’s not a Liberal idea, or a Conservative idea. It’s just a good idea. Call me quaint, but I don’t think that all ideas have to be partisan.
If the current (Conservative) Federal Government were to take the advice of a humble (Liberal) Senator, it would negotiate a long-standing arrangement with the Canadian shipbuilding industry to produce ships.
That way, the Navy and Coast Guard would cease to face scary shortages in ships – the kinds of shortages they are facing now.
That way, the Canadian shipbuilding industry would cease to endure feast-and-famine cycles that dissuade investors and workers alike from making long-term investments in the industry.
And that way – if the proper mechanisms were put in place – the Canadian taxpayers would be protected from gouging from shipbuilders through the use of an oversight mechanism such as the National Energy Board.
One of the most important advantages of my proposal is that a long-term contractual arrangement would assure that one government would not undo the arrangement a previous government had made, as governments often do.
The nuances of my proposal can be debated, but you’d have to either be a raging neo-conservative (“don’t ever interfere in the dog-eat-dog marketplace”) or a hater of all ideas emanating from the mouths of a Liberal to say that this would be a stupid way to bring a welcome measure of stability to the Canadian shipbuilding industry while protecting Canadians at the same time.
Enter (Conservative) Senator David Tkachuk. Senator Tkachuk read a story that appeared in this newspaper about my idea, began foaming at the mouth, and wrote an op-ed piece which appeared here in the Chronicle-Herald on Wednesday.
Said Senator Tkachuk: “(Senator Kenny’s) measures would essentially nationalize the shipbuilding industry, ending competition, stifling innovation, raising the prices taxpayers must pay for navy and coast guard vessels, and generating more red tape.”
He went on to suggest that the only party that had ever reneged on a previous government’s commitment to Canada’s military was the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, which cancelled a contract to replace the Sea King helicopters.
Unlike the rabidly partisan Senator Tkachuk, I point out Liberal mistakes just like I point out Conservative mistakes, and it was certainly a mistake to cancel that helicopter agreement. Just like it was a mistake for Brian Mulroney’s (Conservative) government to sell all Canada’s Chinook helicopters to the Netherlands in the 1980s, which left a disastrous shortage of transport for Canadian troops trying to avoid roadside bombs in Afghanistan two decades later.
Governments make mistakes. All governments make mistakes. All I want to do is put a contract in place that would provide our Navy and Coast Guard with a reliable supply of ships, provide Canadians in the Maritimes, Quebec and British Columbia with a reliable supply of jobs, and provide Canadian taxpayers with protection through the use of an oversight board.
It turns out my idea is up and running in Britain, where ideologies don’t always get in the way of progress. The same Canadian Press story that carried my thoughts in the Herald last week concluded with these two paragraphs on reaching an agreement with a national shipbuilding industry:
A spokesman for the Navy League of Canada said Britain recently developed a similar solution, where shipbuilding consortiums are required to open their books to government inspection and live within profit limits.
"We would see a lot of merit in that approach," said Jerrod Riley, the league's national deputy director.
Thank you, Mr. Riley. And thanks to anyone who puts the interests of protecting Canadians and providing them with job stability ahead of some political mantra that should have left the scene when the unregulated private sector – guardians of all that is good in society – fell on its face last
fall.
[Senator Kenny is Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence]