Despite making multiple hollow announcements – to great fanfare – of plans to build new naval and coast guard vessels, the Conservative government has very little to show for it.
If the government’s goal is to “bring predictability to federal ship procurement,” their track record doesn’t bode well – they’ve dragged out several projects, cancelled most of the others, and delayed the re-announcement of plans to build Joint Support Ships. Conservative cuts to the Defence budget – which at one point left ships ordered to be docked – also harms the credibility of their plan.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives appear to have provided no infrastructure funding for the revitalization of the Canadian ship-building sector, which has a fraction of the capacity needed to meet the government’s ambitious plans.
The Conservative plan will pit East Coast shipyards against those on the West Coast, while the Liberal Party supports an open and transparent process to allocate ship construction between the regions of Canada that have ship-building capacity.
Liberals have also called for the development of a national shipbuilding strategy that would consider new funding for the Structured Financing Facility (SFF) program; access to both the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance (ACCA) and SFF programs; and a commitment to work with Canada’s shipbuilding industry to accelerate the procurement of federal government fleets, including new supply ships.
Here is a summary of the Conservative government’s poor record on naval procurement:
