There's a lot here.
A healthy industry allows for expertise to flow between Fleet Maint Facility, Ottawa SME's (like Class Desk), shipyards, and industry. Allowing for that means that you get less chance of being one person deep on a problem or equipment. I firmly believe that we need a build industry to ensure we have a repair and maintenance industry as well, including those who are under gov't payroll as there is certainly a flow between those industries.
We see people leave to go to work in industry all the time and vice versa. That's one sign of a healthy industry, where there are enough jobs around that people can move within it.
I do not disagree that the project is expensive and we need to keep tabs on things to avoid corruption etc.... But frankly I don't give a crap about the total cost. I really don't. It's kinda irrelevent in the grand scheme of things and its also pretty imaginary until its spent. And saying we should have gotten this or that ship isn't going to change things. We didn't its in the past and we move forward with the decision that is made.
As for buying Constellations, USN made that look cheap because a) they are using the Burke project money for the masts, as its a Burke mast going on that ship, b) ammo/missile different budget (including warehousing costs and ammo storage upgrades), c) no infrastructure attached to that budget like in Canada (jetty upgrades, new ammo jetting in BC etc...), d) radar/comms different budget, e) no new training facilities required (more infrastructure) f)Aegis different budget g) rebuilding Canadian industry cost
If we went to the US to buy it would be much more expensive than what the US says they are paying. And we would still have to come up with the money for infrastructure improvements, ammo, training facilities in different projects.
I expect that there might be a re-evaluation of the surface fleet requirements similar to what Australia is doing within the next 10 years. The Australian re-eval is due to AUKUS and the impact of the nuke boats on the budget and particularly crewing.
IF the expected submarine purchase that's rumoured goes through the RCN is going to have to do a similar exercise. I can't see us crewing 12 frigate/destroyers, 6-12 submarines, 2 JSS, Asterix, 6 AOPS and 12 MCDV's (and whatever is supposed to replace them) in the near to mid term.