National Post - May 27, 2013
By Colin Kenny
When people wish to amuse themselves with logical fallacies, they often turn to books like Alice in Wonderland, where logic spins on its head.
Years from now when Canadians are searching for nonsense they may well turn to the history of the development of Canada’s Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships. Not nearly as funny a story, to be sure. But surely as illogical as anything Lewis Carroll ever dreamed up.
The government plans to purchase eight of these Arctic patrol vessels. Or six. Or, according to Defence Minister Peter MacKay, maybe only one. It doesn’t seem to matter. All that matters, apparently, is that Canada proves it can build a ship. At whatever cost.
The headshaking in the past few weeks has been all about the breathtaking cost of developing these patrol ships. That’s only half of this mind-boggling tale, but lets start there.
According to the CBC’s Terry Milewski, the Canadian government paid the government of Norway $5 million for the design of a patrol vessel the Norwegians have already built. That design was turned over to Irving Shipbuilding Inc., for adaptation for Canadian use.
Milewski claimed that the government is paying Irving $288 million to adapt the design for Canadian use ($250 million plus $38 million HST), before construction begins. That, said Milewski, compares to the less than $100 million that the Norwegian government paid in 2002 to design and build the patrol ship Svalbard, which Irving is adapting.
Furthermore, the government of Ireland is in the process of designing and building two patrol ships for $125 million. Milewski quoted several unidentified sources who were aghast at the price tag for the design, one of whom guessed that $10-$15 million might be a more reasonable fee.
The story naturally raised a furour in the Commons. Irving took out a full page newspaper ad that said the $288 million was not just for “design,” but for something called “definition,” which included engineering and down payments on some major equipment like radar and engines. But nobody at Irving or in the government denied that Canada was paying more for design than other countries were paying for design and construction.
The CBC has since quoted MacKay as saying that even if the government does not end up with six or eight ships “this is a new capability. So if we have only one more ship, that would be one more than we have now in terms of our ability to provide this kind of capability . . .”
Now for the punch line to this story: whether we end up with one ship, or eight ships, these are stupid ships. These ships are being built so the Canadian Navy can patrol our Arctic waters. The Navy hasn’t patrolled our Arctic waters for more than half a century with good reason – there is no military threat there. Sovereignty issues will be decided through diplomacy and in the courts. Nobody is going to start a war in the Arctic.
The Canadian Coast Guard patrols our Arctic waters, with icebreakers in dire need of replacing. The patrol vessels won’t be able to break anything more than summer ice. They will be useless in the Arctic in the winter, so they will be shipped to Canada’s east and west coasts, where they will be just about as useless because they will be slower than most fishing vessels and will have guns too small for full-scale combat and no minesweeping capacity.
Which brings us to one of many ships the Canadian navy really needs: minesweepers. Canada is a trading nation with vulnerable southern ports and harbours. Any hostile force could plant mines on our coasts and be long gone by the time they explode. But the government isn’t buying minesweepers, its buying very expensive ships to patrol waters where there’s no threat.
Canada also needs destroyers and frigates. The navy is staggering along with two antique destroyers, 12 frigates passing their mid-lives, and, at last count, one fully operational submarine. Navy documents show that even this tiny fleet will be diminished over the next decade. Many frigates are unavailable during refit and the destroyers will become so old maintenance costs will be prohibitive.
There is a very long list of the kind of ships Canada needs to defend our waters and our interests abroad. Arctic patrol vessels are the last ships you would put on that list, and only if someone insisted that they be included.
I have long been a proponent of a national shipbuilding program in Canada – our shipyards have fallen on hard times, and reviving them will serve us economically and militarily.
But not at any cost. And not to build floating white elephants that Alice would surely find even more ridiculous than the Red Queen and the Cheshire Cat.
[Colin Kenny is former chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca