The Department of National Defense is unable to say when things went off track. Perhaps Irving Shipbuilding, the contractor chosen to execute the CSC program and helped select the ship design (while anticipating that the first ship would be delivered in the “mid 2020s”) would care to explain the yawning gap between the program’s original $26 billion budget and the most recent $77 billion PBO figure?
If there’s any good news at all in this mess, it’s that the PBO examined some alternatives: Two other types of ship, the FREMM design used by the United States and the Type 31e design that will be used by the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom. Either of these ships would be cheaper than the Type 26 design currently contemplated by the CSC, with the Type 31e design in particular only costing between $27 to 37 billion to build.
More to the point, with government after government having bungled military procurement so badly, at what point will they try something different – such as actually punishing contractors who can’t deliver on their promises? After all, if Irving can’t build the ships at the promised price, there are other Canadian shipyards. And if no one in Canada can do it on time and on budget, the government should not hesitate to get them built abroad instead.
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