E.R. Campbell said:
It seems to me that you're saying that there isn "hope" for a Canadian shipbuilding industry, supported by a moderate, but steady, flow of government (including warship) contracts; maybe not on the scale of France or South Korea, but "hope" all the same; is that right?
If that's true, and assuming one of those yards must be on the Pacific coast, then how many other yards (in the Great Lakes, the Fleuve Saint-Laurent and/or on the Atlantic Coast) are viable and/or necessary?
Not quite what I am saying. Royal Drew hit it more on the nose: At Irving's, the yard is too small to permit both the government build and other work to go on simultaneously. And yes, the St-John shipyard would have been better. So if the strategy is to make an industry that will become more self sufficient (i.e. will get private contracts) that was not the right yard to pick.
We have to be careful here, however. The Shipbuilding Strategy is an
industrial strategy to support a specific industry, but those shipyards remain private enterprise. The government has no business telling them to close or stay open. Best proof is Davie Shipbuilding: entirely privately owned, it is currently the largest operating shipyard in Canada, has good bookings and is doing fine since it came out of bankruptcy protection. It was not part of the selection process during the selection of yards for the Ship building strategy because it was in bankruptcy proceedings. However, it is proving to be viable without any government assistance.
Also, we have to be very careful about claiming, all the time, that the government "paid the Irving's to close Saint-John Shipbuilding". It is not that simple.
While the government paid the Irving's a huge amount to build a modern and efficient new shipyard for the Saint-John Shipbuilding yard and gave them contracts for twelve large and expensive builds (the HAL's),
the Irving's completely failed to market that into civvies side contracts to keep the yard going and/or expand. So when the Batch III frigates were cancelled (before even letting the contract out), the Irving found themselves with a completely idle yard and tons of employees to lay off
as a result of their failure to market their new yard.
They parlayed their political capital into some form of "damages" for the "cancellation" from the government so they could pay for the lay-offs without digging into their own pocket. The government reluctantly agreed to avoid the political fall-out but then required the yard to be closed for good as compensation (so they would never have to do this again).
Considering this, it is surprising that the current government decided to go with a yard operated by the Irving's yet again, though to their discharge, the Halifax yard has always survived on repair/refit work when no government work was ongoing.
