Dr. Adam Lajeunesse
"Another of the big future questions is, of course, the Canadian Submarine Replacement Program. The replacement of the Victoria class has been hinted at by the government by DND, but there aren't any firm decisions yet. Can you give us an update on the status of submarine replacement?"
VAdm Angus Topshee
"The government has been clear that they want Canada to have to maintain a submarine capability. Our assessment is that we require a force of at least eight and, ideally 12, submarines to do so.
We've twice looked at nuclear submarines in our history and there is tremendous cost and challenge to that, as Australia is demonstrating right now. And, even if we decided on the need to go after nuclear submarines right now, we would still need to buy a replacement class to bridge the gap. So, no matter what we do the next acquisition for submarines for the Canadian Navy will be diesel submarines, whether it is a bridge to something else, or as the solution.
Our view is that that's going to have to be a military off the shelf procurement. We've got a recent report that explores submarine building around the world. The South Koreans, for instance, developed a really robust submarine building industry. It took them 37 years to get to where they are now. And so, would it be possible to do that in Canada? Absolutely. But we're talking about a multigenerational commitment by the Government of Canada. And, importantly, the Koreans operate a lot of submarines, and so we would be looking at building far more than 12 submarines for Canada if we wanted to go down that path. So, if the decision was to build a domestic submarine building capability, we're still going to have to start as the Koreans did with military off the shelf procurement and then gradually repatriate the ability to build submarines back in Canada.
That being said, I don't think that, given the size of force that we're talking about, in terms of value for money, it makes any sense to develop that capacity. So, we are recommending to government that it pursue a military off the shelf procurement. For this, there are a number of countries and companies that build submarines that will meet Canadian needs."