FSTO said:
Transport Minister, and former navy officer, Marc Garneau said the federal government doesn’t need another supply ship.
”We cannot artificially create a need for something that doesn’t exist,”
You guys: Lay off the poor sucker. He is just doing a classic politician trick, which is to tell only half the story, leaving an important portion unsaid. The full "real" quote would read:
”We cannot artificially create a need for something that doesn’t exist, [unsaid: unless it is politically expedient for us to get out of a badly thought promise or to get more votes in the maritime provinces]”
Personally, I would love to be there (and hope journalists remember at that time) when the government, which has already stated that at a recent ceremony in Halifax that it is "considering the possibility", announces that they will purchase a seventh AOPS that the Navy has never asked for, is not needed, and covers no gap whatsoever in military capability, for the sole reason that there is a gap in work at Irving's.
Meanwhile they will let an actual, existing, flagrant and enormous gap in naval capability go uncovered for six to eight years because they want to placate the imbecilic reasoning of civil servants who have bet their whole career on the National Shipbuilding [procurement: the word was dropped because as a "procurement" program it is a failure] Strategy, that granting construction outside the NSS would weaken it.
I ask all of you to note something: Whenever the Libs talk about the iAOR issue, they always indicate that the RCN has no need for more than
three AORs. Now there is no doubt that the RCN has always indicated, since the retirement of PROVIDER, that three AORs is the number they consider to be required to be able to maintain the availability of one operational AOR on each coast at all time, and three was the original number of vessels to be procured under the original "JSS" acquisition program. However, as of right now, and until the iAOR comes on line in February, the current number of AOR in the RCN is zero. With the iAOR, it will go up to one. And unless another iAOR is leased, the number will remain at one until the first of the new PROTECTEUR class becomes operational, which is likely 5 to 7 years from now, at which point, there will be two, until the next AOR becomes operational about two years later. Since the iAOR is leased, it can then be returned - or acquired. But clearly, a second iAOR would reduce the deficit of AOR's in the meantime and help cover at least three years of a five year gap. And that is if all goes well and the PROTECTEUR construction begins at Seaspan when originally planned.
/RANT OFF