Liberals alter course on frigate replacement and rely on foreign design
By Murray Brewster, The Canadian Press — Feb 23 2016
OTTAWA — The Trudeau government has quietly revised the framework for the navy's planned frigate replacement program, opting for a proven foreign design over a custom domestic blueprint.
The news was delivered to defence industry contractors meeting in Ottawa on Tuesday.
Lisa Campbell, the assistant deputy minister in the acquisitions branch at Public Services and Procurement Canada, said an evaluation has determined that there are existing warship designs that would meet Canadian needs and deciding to go in that direction "was a big step for us."
Commodore Art MacDonald said the navy has also refined its requirements for the advanced warships, on which Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax is expected to begin construction some time around 2020.
In addition, the federal government will run only one competition for building both the ship and installing the sophisticated electronics, instead of doing it separately, as originally planned.
Campbell said those decisions will help not only speed up the shipbuilding process, which has been proceeding at a glacial pace, but could help control costs down the road.
When originally conceived, the Harper government estimated the cost of building 15 warships would be in the range of $26 billion, but internal documents and published reports last fall suggested the price tag could go as high as $40 billion.
Relying on a proven, off-the-shelf warship design from another country takes a lot of the uncertainty out of the planning process, Campbell said.
"We don't know the actual cost per ship yet," she said in an interview. "We're not talking about a custom build anymore. We're talking about existing designs .... and in our view that is likely to have an impact on diminishing all sorts of risks."
There would be, however, some modifications to the design to suit unique Canadian requirements. The process is not unlike the one followed when the Harper government selected a German design for the navy's soon-to-be-built joint supply ships.
