The government has maintained the national shipbuilding procurement strategy, as the massive plan to overhaul of Canada’s navy and coast guard fleets is called, is moving full steam ahead.
But difficult negotiations with industry, tight budget allocations and schedule delays have been bubbling beneath the surface — and the Parliamentary Budget Office’s involvement threatens to bring them to the surface in a very public way.
Liberal defence critic John McKay said PBO officials had confirmed to him they were studying the shipbuilding plan after he asked them to do so in June 2011.
That request was made before Halifax and Vancouver were chosen to carry out the majority of work and before the government revealed that delivery of the first ships to be produced under the strategy — seven armed Arctic vessels — would be delayed three years.
There are fears that delay will spill over into other shipbuilding projects, affecting plans to have replacements for Canada’s destroyers, frigate and supply ships in place before they are retired.
At the same time, ever-increasing material costs and inflation — which is much steeper in the defence industry than most others — means any delay undercuts the $35 billion set aside for the plan, possibly resulting in fewer ships or capabilities.
“I don’t expect it to be as smooth as the government wants it to be,” McKay said.
“After all the Hosannas have been sung, there’s something wrong. We’re deeply suspicious that this thing is going to go sideways.”
NDP spokesman Marc-André Viau said PBO officials had also notified his party they were looking at the shipbuilding strategy.
Given the government’s record on defence purchases and the scope of the national shipbuilding strategy, Viau said, it is important to get an independent assessment of the project’s implications and long-term costs.
This isn’t the first time the PBO has looked into a multi-billion-dollar military purchase.
In March 2011, weeks before the last federal election, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page released an explosive report that estimated the Harper government’s plan to purchase 65 F-35s would cost billions more than Canadians were being told.
National Defence openly contested Page’s conclusions and some Conservative ministers questioned his credibility.
But the auditor general revealed in April that defence officials had been withholding information related to the full cost of the F-35s, and that Page’s numbers were actually much close to the real price.
The F-35 program has since been taken away from the Defence Department — although it and the Harper government have since been embroiled in a number of problems related to military equipment purchases.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Lee Berthiaume
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