Colin Kenny, Citizen Special Published: Thursday, May 31, 2007
Canada's ports serve as gateways to more than 100 economies across the world. Twenty per cent of our trade with the United States goes by sea. Ninety-seven per cent 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 generate more than $4 billion in export income annually.
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 command and control when it's our turn.
To refit and replace such ships on a timely basis requires starting many years in advance of having them operational -- this process can take well over a decade.
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 prohibitive.
There are no approved plans to replace these destroyers. Such plans would naturally flow from an overall defence capability 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 co-ordinate 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 draft of the defence capability 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.
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.
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. 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.
On the whole, Canadian naval vessels are so old that in many cases spare parts are no longer available. Many ships are in such a 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.
The one area where the government appears willing to make an investment is on smaller "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 is 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.
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 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.
