Ottawa Citizen, May 31, 2007
Windsor Star, June 7, 2007
By Senator Colin Kenny
Canada’s ports serve as gateways to more than 100 economies across the world. Twenty percent of our trade with the United States goes by sea. Ninety-seven percent of Canada’s exports to all other countries flow across ocean trade routes.
Many of Canada’s frontier oil reserves are offshore, and our fisheries still generation more than $4 billion in export income annually. Our territorial waters are becoming more vulnerable as icebergs and ice floes melt away.
Canadians have a vested interest in protecting our nation along our coasts and on the high seas. Yesterday I made the case that Canada must have a robust navy, both to protect our territory and our interests abroad, but also to help forge relationships with like-minded countries advancing common interests around the world.
But that navy, which is an afterthought to most Canadians (and to most Canadian voters), is beginning to disintegrate in a number of vital areas.
Take frigates and destroyers.
Only frigates and destroyers are large enough to allow our Navy to operate in Canada’s most severe sea conditions.
Beyond our waters, frigates and destroyers constitute the basic building blocks of the navies of medium-sized countries like Canada that sail in common cause in coalitions with allies. Only frigates and destroyers allow Canada to make meaningful contributions to multi-national naval operations, and to take a leadership role in control and command when it’s our turn.
To refit and replace these kinds of ships on a timely basis requires starting the process many years in advance of having them operational – this process can take well over a decade.
Destroyers
Our three destroyers will “rust out” by 2012, when they will be 40 years old. That doesn’t mean the Navy won’t keep sending them to sea, but it does mean that maintenance costs become cost-prohibitive.
There are no approved plans to replace these destroyers. Such plans would naturally flow from an overall Defence Capabilities Plan, that has been due for more than a year now but that the government seems to have shunted aside as it focuses on surviving Afghanistan.
Without destroyers Canada will lose its command-and-control capacity at sea, meaning the ability to coordinate the progress of two or more ships. This would assign us the role of perpetual followers of someone else’s navy.
Even if Canada were to purchase destroyers from other countries, they would have to be reconfigured to fit into Canadian operational systems, and this would take time. Even if the government were to act quickly – which it has shown no signs of doing – a leaked drafted of the Defence Capabilities Plan suggests that the time to assure Canada’s continued command-and-control capacity at sea has already passed, and that there will be a gap of five to eight years when the current destroyers become inoperable.
Frigates
Canada has 12 frigates. They were commissioned between 1992 and 1996, which means the early ones are now due for their mid-life refits, and the later ones soon will be. These ships need to be modernized in order to make a useful military contribution during the second half of their lives.
The process of getting budgetary approvals, soliciting and examining bids and other procurement protocol takes time, which means that the process for refits should have been started by now. It hasn’t been. The process for replacing these frigates should also be in the works. Again, it isn’t.
If something isn’t initiated soon, some future government is going to find itself without a frigate fleet. Naval sources predict the possibility of a future gap of several years without these essential vessels if re-ordering is not done immediately.
Submarines
Which brings us to submarines. Submarines excel at defending, and at surveillance and intelligence gathering. Even with modern technology, they are very difficult to detect.
Canada’s four diesel-electric submarines are quiet when operated electrically when they are beneath the surface, and they effectively complement the nuclear subs of our American, British and French allies. The mere presence of submarines defending our coasts is a deterrent to potentially hostile vessels.
Canada’s four submarines, purchased from the British nine years ago, are in the process of being refitted so they can fire Canadian-designed torpedoes. By 2009, three of them should finally be ready. A fourth – the Chicoutimi – is supposed to gain this capacity at some later date. There will need to be orders in place to replace these subs by 2015, or Canada will lose its submarine capacity.
There are rumours that plans to make the fourth sub – the Chicoutimi – operational will be cancelled. If this is true, Canada would lose a permanent submarine capacity on the West Coast. This would not only lessen our capacity to defend ourselves there, but could put an end to intelligence sharing with allies operating subs in the Pacific.
Replenishment Ships
These ships not only re-supply warships with food, water, spare parts, ammunition and fuel while they are at sea and conducting operations, they will move equipment and supplies to land troops conducting operations. They are known as ‘force-multipliers’ because they dramatically increase the effectiveness of smaller warships.
The government has ordered up only three. Canada needs four – two on each coast. Otherwise, when ships are being refitted or repaired, one coast would be left without any replenishment ships.
Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels (MCDVs)
MCVDs are primarily used for training. They are all but useless for interdiction – they can’t even keep up with modern fishing vessels.
There is one plan to replace them with ships that might be slightly smaller than a frigate but with out all the expensive electronics and weapon systems a frigate requires.
These appear to be the only ships that the government has given the green light to replacing, but the government’s focus does not appear to be coastal defence. In fact, the government is insisting that DND refer to these vessels as “Arctic Patrol Vessels,” to conform to its promotion of the idea that it should be a navy priority to defend Canadian sovereignty in the North.
The truth that issues of sovereignty are going to be decided politically or legally – Canada isn’t going to blow any U.S. or British ships out of the water. Nevertheless, the government focus is on putting the navy into Arctic waters while our east and west coasts lie largely undefended.
The government has committed $3 billion to building eight of these “Arctic” vessels. This raises the question of whether this money will be siphoned away from funds that should be dedicated to the replacement of the destroyers and modernization of the whole fleet of frigates.
Spare Parts
Canadian naval vessels are so old that in many cases spare parts are no longer available. Many ships are in such tenuous state that every time one puts to sea, the Navy must invest the time and energy in transferring parts from other ships remaining in port. DND got only 59 percent of the National Procurement Funding it requested in the last budgetary year.
The Big Picture
Canadians need to understand what is happening here. At a time when emerging Asian countries are building up their navies, Canada is on the brink of allowing its navy to disintegrate.
The Minister of Defence is an army man. The Chief of the Defence Staff is an army man, and so is his is his Vice-Chief. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that government military purchases announced over the past year are so army-oriented.
Or perhaps it is simply panic that we will fail in Afghanistan.
The political consideration is that there is no immediate political payoff in rebuilding a country’s navy. The benefits would accrue to Canadians long after the current government is gone.
Whatever the reason, Canadians should be paying attention. A maritime nation without a navy is like a king not wearing any clothes: sovereignty undressed.