Boy did the Brits ever see us coming in 1998 when the Chretien Liberals pulled up to Honest Nigel’s Used Submarine Shop looking to buy four underwater patrol boats. The quartet they sold us for the unbelievably low price of just $750 million have been up on blocks in our front yard almost ever since, with weeds growing out the portholes. I expect Canadian Pickers to come along anytime now and offer us $2,000 for the set, take it or leave it.
None of the four is currently in service. HMCS Chicoutimi — the one that caught fire on its voyage from Britain’s previously owned boat lot to Halifax in Oct. 2004 — has, according to the CBC, “been in active service of the Royal Canadian Navy exactly two days in the 13 years since it was purchased.” It is not expected back in service for another two years, at which time about $400 million will have been spent on repairs and upgrades.
No sub purchased by the Liberals will be floating underwater around our coasts until at least next year. And by the time all four are operational in 2016 — five years from now and 18 years after they were purchased! — making them seaworthy will have cost Canadian taxpayers $3 billion.
Let’s face it, the Limeys sold us lemons. If the Liberals had just agreed from the start to buy new nuclear subs, Canada would have spent about the same money ($3 billion), but we would have had subs we could have been using for the past 10 years already, with another 30 years to go. Now by the time we get our British diesel subs fixed, they will be 30 years old and have only about 10 years of serviceable life remaining. Moreover, they still won’t be able to sail under the North Pole and patrol the Arctic because they need air to feed their engines and no aspirated sub can stay underwater for the 14-21 days it takes to sail under the Polar icepack.
This is not unlike the Liberals decision in the same era to cancel the EH-101 helicopter contract. Breaking the deal signed by the Mulroney Tories in the early 1990s cost taxpayers $500 million, on top of which we had to buy new helicopters anyway. Pretty much the same helicopter at pretty much the same price.
Asked about the “dud sub” purchase on Thursday, Senator Art Eggleton, who had been Defence minister at the time, insisted the Liberals got a good deal because “we got them at a quarter of the cost it would have cost to build new ones.”
No, you didn’t, Sir. Since the purchase, taxpayers have had to spend more than four times the original price just to bring the boats up to code and in the meantime our navy has been without subs. In no way is that a bargain. You and your colleagues got hosed, pure and simple, while trying to take the cheap way out.
So what should we do? Buy nuclear submarines or get out of the sub business altogether.
Remember a nuclear submarine is one powered by a nuclear reactor. When the Mulroney Tories tried to buy nuke subs in the late 1980s, the move got nixed, in part, because the Liberals were able to convince people the Tories were trying to buy subs with nuclear missiles onboard. That wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.
If we want to preserve our Arctic sovereignty, we need submarines capable of staying submerged for weeks. Only subs with nuclear powerplants can do that reliably. So if we want to patrol our northern ocean effectively we need nukes. Either that or we should just get out of the sub-owning business altogether.
But one way or the other, we should just tow out to sea the diesel subs the Brits stuck us with, sink them and turn them into barrier reefs that tourists and divers can visit. Maybe that way we can recoup a little tax revenue.
...). Not to mention the added benefit of being able to patrol our own ice pack....
