You square the circle by first deciding what you actually want the navy to do, instead of pretending every ship has to do everything, everywhere, all at once. That means a serious new white paper, not another exercise in ambiguity, that lays out Canada’s real naval priorities in plain language: continental defence, Arctic sovereignty, NATO escort work, trade protection, domestic presence, expeditionary support, and what matters most when resources are finite. Once that is nailed down, the rest should follow logically, force structure, readiness, reserve capacity, crewing, logistics, industrial planning, and which ships need to be high end combatants versus which can be simpler, faster supplementary hulls. If Canada wants extra hulls in the water quickly in a crisis, the answer is not “scrounging” after the shooting starts, because by then like you said every ally is chasing the same steel, engines, missiles, electronics, and yard space, and the cupboards will already be bare. A far more serious approach would be to hold reserve stocks of the steel and other critical long lead materials we know we would need in wartime and the capability to build these systems and consumables so Canada is not just trying to supply itself at the last minute, but is actually in a position to help supply its allies as well. That is how you make it believable: define the missions honestly, write policy to match them, protect industrial inputs in peacetime, and build a mobilization plan before the emergency arrives, because once war starts it is too late to begin pretending preparation can be improvised.
