OTTAWA – Canada’s ship yards will be "humming like they haven’t hummed since the Second World War" under a $35 billion, 30-year federal shipbuilding strategy announced Thursday, says Defence Minister Peter MacKay.
The government will select two Canadian shipyards – one to construct large combat vessels, the other for non-combat ships – within the next two years, and contracts for smaller ships would be open to bids by other Canadian shipyards. Competition would be national and overseen by a "fairness monitor."
The "national shipbuilding procurement strategy" was welcomed as "a big step" by Peter Cairns, a retired Canadian vice-admiral who heads the Shipbuilders Association of Canada. He said shipyards in Newfoundland, Halifax, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia would be eligible to compete for the major work and the industry will work together.
He also predicted highly-skilled workers from the East Coast will be lured home from the Alberta oilsands for the highly-skilled jobs.
"We’ve been pushing for something like this for quite some time," he said. "It’s very important for the government to actually acknowledge that the shipbuilding industry is important to the country, is strategic to the country, for Maritime defence.
"For the longest time people looked at shipbuilding as an old industry, where the only tool you need is a sledgehammer, when in fact it’s a very high-tech industry. Inside it’s as sophisticated as a space shuttle or any airplane that’s flying."
MacKay said the priority is the construction of joint supply ships for the Canadian navy, a project that has been delayed for two years since the government halted the procurement process due to bidders’ non-compliance with requirements and costs.
The plan that MacKay and three other ministers announced at a military trade show got a thumbs up from Peter Stoffer, a Nova Scotia New Democrat MP who has lobbied for a federal policy to rejuvenate the shipbuilding industry for years, and was on hand for the announcement.
"I will give them credit," Stoffer said. "In 2003, John Manley . . . said shipbuilding was a sunset industry."
He was referring to former federal finance minister John Manley who repeatedly told MPs that the then Liberal government could not afford huge subsidies for shipbuilding.
Stoffer said he hoped the strategy would not lead to a wasteful duel among the handful of shipyards in Canada because there was enough work for everybody.
"You could have the West Coast and East Coast spending millions of dollars fighting each other over these competitive bids," he said. "If the government worked with the industry, and I’m hoping that they’ll do that . . . that money could go to building ships instead of beating each other over the head in the competition."
Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose said the plan would generate 75 million hours of work across the country over three decades.
"This strategy will be the framework through which the government invests $35 billion over the next thirty years to acquire twenty-eight large vessels for the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian navy, as well as more than a hundred smaller ships," MacKay said.
The shipyards would be expected to invest in training to prepare their workforce and the facilities would have to show regional balance in subcontracts.
"There’s going to be enough work for all the shipyards," MacKay told reporters, enumerating a need to replace combat vessels, supply ships, icebreakers, coast guard vessels, and Arctic operations vessels.
"We’re well on our way to an important process, an important strategy, that is going to see the shipyards across the country humming like they haven’t hummed since the Second World War."
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