By Scott Taylor
There has been a lot of recent news about defence procurement in Canada, and sadly, none of it has been positive.
Last week the Ottawa Citizen reported that Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux is warning that taxpayers will face a $300 billion price tag for 15 new warships.
To be fair, that figure includes the cost of maintaining and upgrading the Canadian Surface Combatant (CSC) ships over its life cycle. Giroux’s numbers cover the 65-year process, right from designing the new ships to the eventual disposal of the vessels.
However, Giroux did peg the cost of developing and building these 15 frigates at $84.5 billion which amounts to $5.6 billion per ship.
To put this in context, the UK has recently built two 65,000 ton aircraft carriers at a cost of roughly $4.5 billion each.
Those apologists for Canadian shipyards who claim this is an “unfair comparison” are simply earning their paycheques.
It is inexplicable that Canada would pay such an astronomical sum of money for so comparatively little actual naval capability in return.
In terms of timelines, it should be pointed out that Irving Shipyard was first selected to build the 15 new CSC’s back in 2011. At that juncture the acquisition cost was pegged at just $26 billion.
To date no steel has been cut and the hoped for construction start date on these ships is not until 2024. In his latest report, Giroux noted that a one-year delay in the project added $7 billion to the total cost.
While the CSC project represents the largest procurement in Canadian history, it is not alone when it comes to cost overruns and delivery delays.
In the saga of acquiring two new Joint Supply Ships (JSS) for the RCN, the current projection is for the first to be delivered by Seaspan Shipyard in 2025 with the second vessel complete by 2027.
For those who follow these things closely, it will be remembered that the original timeline for this project was to have the first new JSS in service by 2012.
This was then pushed to a 2018 delivery and then 2019. Now we wait. As for the cost, the original budget was set at $2.3 billion for two ships. That price tag is now at $4.1 billion.
The $20 billion (and climbing) project to replace the RCAF’s fleet of aging CF-18 fighter jets is a saga in itself, which has yet to be fully played out.
At present, the Lockheed Martin F-35 is the aircraft which won the competition to replace the CF-18. The Liberal government has entered negotiations to acquire 88 F-35’s with the first delivery to be in 2025. However, to date no contract has been signed with Lockheed Martin.
While the CF-18 replacement remains a long drawn out series of dramas, the Fixed Wing Search and Rescue (FWSAR) acquisition must rank as one of the Canadian military’s most ill-fated procurements.
Originally ‘fast tracked’ in 2004, the Liberal government of the day authorized DND to purchase 17 aircraft to replace the well-aged fleet of Buffalo airplanes that were serving Canada’s FWSAR needs. The original price tag was $1.1 billion and the first delivery was to be in 2006.
However, it was not until December 8, 2016 that a contract was finally signed for Airbus to provide 15 aircraft at a cost of $2.2 billion. While deliveries of the C295W have begun, they have yet to be successfully certified.
This means that with the old Buffalo’s finally retired from service, Canada is presently deficient in this vital FWSAR capability, particularly off the BC coast.
As the war in Ukraine has served to illustrate, sophisticated modern weapon systems cannot be swiftly replaced. In a modern war scenario, if Canada were to engage in combat with a ‘near-peer’ such as Russia or China, we would be forced to utilize what we have in our existing arsenal.
Given that we have given away armoured vehicles, artillery and much of our ammo to Ukraine already, we would be in a sorry state.
With the current lead times, delays and cost overruns of virtually all of our recently major procurements, maybe we need to completely overhaul our sense of urgency when it comes to equipping our military with what they actually need.
If one closely follows the combat trends in Ukraine, this would mean buying loads of aerial drones, anti-armour missiles and ground-air defence systems. Not manned fighter jets and anti-submarine ships.
