Fewer Arctic warships, leased tankers a sign of more modest shipbuilding plan

OTTAWA - The Harper government is trimming its expected order of Arctic patrol ships and evaluating a set of unsolicited proposals to convert civilian cargo ships for use by the Canadian navy, The Canadian Press has learned.

Both steps are a sign that more modest expectations have been set for the government's national shipbuilding strategy, which has yet to deliver a single vessel some three years after the shipyards were chosen in 2011.

The navy is set to retire its two replenishment ships, HMCS Preserver and the fire-damaged HMCS Protecteur, without having any replacements ready to sail, despite a decade-long replacement program.

Ottawa handed shipyards too much control of $105-billion project, researchers say

The Canadian government has lost control over costs in its $105-billion shipbuilding program because it’s handed too much power to shipyards placed in charge of the project, a new report argues.

Authors Michael Byers, a University of British Columbia professor of political science, and researcher Stewart Webb are calling on Ottawa to put a tighter leash on the program or risk seeing costs spiral even higher. Irving Shipbuilding on the east coast and Seaspan on the west coast have been selected to build the bulk of the vessels.

China Leak: Charged Man Had No Security Clearance, Says Exec

The man RCMP accuse of trying to leak secrets about Canada's $36.6-billion federal shipbuilding program to China had no official access to information about the project, the president of Lloyd's Register Canada told The Tyee.

The RCMP-led Integrated National Security Enforcement Team announced Security of Information Act charges Dec. 1 against 53-year-old Quentin Qing Huang, a Chinese-educated surveyor with Lloyd's Register's Toronto Technical Support Office. Huang was arrested and placed in custody a day earlier.

Government’s $38-billion shipbuilding plan doesn’t have enough money, auditor general to report

OTTAWA — Canada’s auditor general has found that the billions of dollars set aside for the federal government’s shipbuilding plan won’t be enough to get the navy the vessels it was promised, or needs.

Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s report on the national shipbuilding procurement strategy won’t be released until Nov. 26, but several sources who have seen versions of the report have told Postmedia News that it shows the current plan is untenable.

New warships to cost more than $100-billion, Ottawa estimates

The cradle-to-grave cost to Canadian taxpayers to acquire new warships will exceed $100-billion, the federal government says – tens of billions of dollars more than Ottawa has previously disclosed.

It is the first time the federal government has gone public with its best guess on the full life-cycle cost of up to 15 surface combat vessels.

The political demand for transparency has changed in Ottawa since a controversy over the true cost of a plan to buy F-35 fighter jets, and the Harper government feels pressure to open the books.

Ottawa was warned about Arctic patrol ships' high price

Two days before signing a contract to begin work on a $3-billion shipbuilding project, the federal government was warned by its own advisers that the contract was overpriced — but signed it anyway.

The warning was contained in a previously confidential independent review of the initial phase of the government's plan to spend $3.1 billion on a fleet of Arctic offshore patrol ships, known as AOPS.

Why was F-35 data available to the PBO, but Arctic ships data kept secret?

Once again the Parliamentary Budget Officer (interim) has seen the need to remind everyone that, despite continued requests to federal departments for data related to budgetary cuts in the 2012 Economic Action Plan, very little has actually been forthcoming.

Interim PBO – and Library of Parliament head librarian – Sonia L’Heureux issued a statement Monday afternoon noting that the (new) July 19 deadline for information “necessary to undertake analysis” has come and gone “and I have yet to be provided with all the information that I need to undertake the requested analysis.” If and when it does come, L’Heureux says she looks forward to performing said analysis – a line that feels more sarcastic than anything at this point.

Feds pick off-the-shelf design for long-awaited resupply ships

OTTAWA - The federal government has picked an existing design for the replacement of the navy's decrepit supply ships, rather than going with a from-scratch model that it says would have cost more.

ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems Canada, which has built similar ships for the German navy, will supply the design for two or three Royal Canadian Navy ships, winning out over BMT Fleet Technology.

Canadian suppliers looking to get in on action of $33-billion national shipbuilding procurement strategy

OTTAWA—As Canada’s $33-billion rebuild of the Royal Canadian Navy gears up into design and production, so are defence companies who are onsite at Ottawa military conference CANSEC, looking to get a piece of the action by promoting their products and services.

“Reinvestment in the Canadian Armed Forces is among the largest and the most ambitious endeavours that Canada will undertake in the next 20 years,” retired Canadian vice-admiral Paul Maddison told the hundreds of defence officials and suppliers gathered for his keynote address at CANSEC May 29.

Arctic patrol ship claims not backed up by Public Works

The department of Public Works has been unable to substantiate claims by parliamentary secretary Chris Alexander that the department gave the CBC details of the budget for designing a new fleet of Arctic offshore patrol ships.

The CBC had, in fact, received none of the details requested, and still hasn't.

Ship deal hits rocky shoals

OTTAWA - In all the delirium of competing for lucrative contracts to build new warships, we lost sight of the big question — what exactly are we building?

Irving Shipbuilding has recently bought full-page ads in The Chronicle Herald and the Ottawa Citizen to defend the high cost of building Arctic/offshore patrol ships in Halifax.

Canada paying far more than going rate for shipbuilding design

A CBC News investigation has uncovered a $250-million mystery at the heart of Canada's ambitious shipbuilding program.

Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose and Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced March 7 in Halifax that Ottawa will pay Irving Shipbuilding $288 million just to design – not build – a fleet of new Arctic offshore patrol ships.

Irving will then build the ships under a separate contract.

How not to rebuild Canada's navy

If you thought it hard having to deal with the bizarre budgetary twists and turns of the F-35 fighter jet procurement, with its stratospheric cost overruns, brace yourself for even wilder turbulence over the navy's massive construction program.

Not what anyone wants to hear, I know. After all, for years now the Harper government has been promising that this $33 billion plan to rebuild our navy's aging fleets would be a model of how to handle big, complex procurement programs.

Irving payroll leans on taxpayers

OTTAWA — Nova Scotia taxpayers are subsidizing up to 8.5 per cent of Irving shipyard worker salaries over the course of the national shipbuilding program.

Amid media and opposition calls for openness, Irving Shipbuilding Inc., released new details about its $260-million loan from the province Tuesday.

Memo aims to reassure PM on cost of navy ships

OTTAWA -- A leaked memo shows officials at National Defence scrambled behind the scenes last month to reassure the Harper government they knew how much it would cost to replace the navy's supply ships.

In a report released last month, parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page said not enough money had been set aside for the $2.6-billion joint support ship program. Page suggested it would cost more than $4.1 billion to replace the existing vessels -- HMCS Protecteur and HMCS Preserver. Both ships are more than 40 years old and the stop-and-start process to acquire new ships has been going on for a decade.

Ottawa announces $288-million deal to kick-start design of Arctic patrol ships

HALIFAX - Ottawa's plan to bolster the navy's fleet nudged toward the drawing board Thursday after it signed a contract to design the next generation of Arctic offshore patrol ships.

The deal with Irving Shipbuilding of Halifax is worth an estimated $288 million and divides the design work into seven phases including engineering and project management before the vessels can be built.

Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose said the work will assess capability, affordability and risk of constructing the ships, which is expected to begin in 2015.

After the F-35 debacle, are warship purchases next?

The debacle of the Canadian government's decision to begin the process of spending spend untold tens of billions of dollars on a new fighter jet, Lockheed Martin's F-35, is by now a well-told story. The untendered, F-35 purchase was declared a done deal several years ago by the Harper Conservatives. It's all unraveling now. CBC Television's The Fifth Estate documented the saga in a great, one hour broadcast last September.

Alas for the people of Canada and the world, the times are such that the end result will be the purchase of an established and more reliable fighter plane (killing machine), possibly Boeing's F-18 Super Hornet.

Military supply ships $1.5B over budget, watchdog says

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page has calculated the cost of replacing the military's two Protecteur-class supply ships and come up with a figure 60 per cent higher than what the Harper government had budgeted for the purchase.

In a report released Thursday, the total cost for the supply ship portion of the goverment's much-heralded shipbuilding strategy is calculated according to a cost risk range of between $2.7 billion and $6.3 billion.

Government may have underestimated cost of new resupply ships

OTTAWA — A new wrinkle appears to have emerged in the Harper government’s $35-billion national shipbuilding plan following revelations planners may have underestimated how much it will cost to build new resupply ships.

Successive federal governments have been planning to replace Canada’s fleet of 45-year-old support vessels for the better part of a decade.

Navy supply ships set to join F-35 as political lightning rod in 2013

OTTAWA - The navy's long-delayed, much-studied joint support ship program is expected to come under the political microscope within weeks in what is likely another defence equipment embarrassment for the Harper government.

The parliamentary budget officer has been examining the program and is poised to release his findings once MPs return from their Christmas break.

Kevin Page's incendiary analysis of the F-35 fighter jet program sparked a raging political fire which continues to burn.