Build it first; Name it after

Harper is getting a little ahead of himself here.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper summoned up the jowly ghost of one of his Conservative predecessors Thursday, announcing that John Diefenbaker would be both the name of Canada's new anywhere, anytime icebreaker and the inspiration for his vision of Arctic development.

Yes, well there's only one problem. Nobody has even started cutting steel for this non-existent icebreaker.

Although, the "name" is rather appropriate, don't you think? I mean, Diefenbaker was the Conservative who started a tradition of introducing big projects and then cancelling them before they were finished. Say, AVRO Arrow.

And I can see where Harper gets his inspiration. Dief could spin a lie with the best of them. Say, BOMARC. And, if you're so inclined, listen to Dief tell you how rosy things were going to be.

In the end, the RCAF ended up with U.S. supplied F-101 Voodoos (which remained in service until the Trudeau government replaced them with F-18 Hornets) and highly dubious BOMARC-B missiles under U.S. control. But I digress.

Harper, in declaring Diefenbaker his inspiration, may be trying to duplicate what Dief pulled off in 1958. Diefenbaker was uncomfortable with his minority government and called a snap election. His slogan for that campaign? Canada of the North, and he proceded to shovel tax money off the back of a truck for northern development and subsidies.

Coincidence?

There is, however, something Diefenbaker did during that campaign which Harper is never likely to do: Diefenbaker increased funding to social programs, a move which a majority of Canadians welcomed. It got Dief his majority (a big honkin' majority) and then he led Canada into an ugly recession. He ended up firing the Governor of the Bank of Canada, (with whom he disagreed on economic and monetary policy), further exacerbating the economic problems of the country and virtually killing off foreign investment in a tattered Canadian industry.

Anyway, back to this yet-to-be-built icebreaker. Don't count on this happening too soon. The Harperites have already underfunded the program and, unless they're prepared to cough up more money, a lot more money, it's going to go the way of the navy's Joint Support Ships.

The last Conservative fiasco around this very same type of ship goes back to the last Conservative government, led by Brian Mulroney. In 1987 they were pounding their chests telling us all that we were going north with the largest conventional icebreaker in the world. But they had seriously under-estimated the actual costs, having allocated only $320 million in 1985 for the project. It was known by experts in 1986 that the cost was more like $750 million. So, when the prime contractor told the government that it would take more than twice what the government had allocated to complete such a ship, (which was only a lofted plan at this point), Mulroney cancelled the project.

How much have the Conservatives allocated for the newest attempt at an icebreaker? Why, $720 million, virtually the same amount it would have cost to build the Polar 8 in 1989. Since then, the cost of building the same vessel today, with improvements of course, would be in the neighbourhood of $1.4 billion.

Predicition: This ship will never be built. If the Conservatives continue in government there will be a late Friday night announcement and it will die, although the minister making the announcement will state that the government remains committed to the project.

This all so fits. Harper naming empty air and vacant northern seascapes with a name that started a Conservative legacy of grand ideas and failed capital projects. But at least it has a name; the right name. Because when it gets cancelled because "costs have unexpectedly exceeded the allocation" we can smile and say, It's what Diefenbaker would have done.

Getting things done... without thinking.

Steve Harper has done it again. Without a comprehensive defence review in place, without a white-paper and contradicting the methods laid out by the Canadian navy to secure the Arctic, he has decided to tell the navy what type of ships they will have to form a fleet.

The federal government will fund the construction of six to eight new Arctic patrol ships to help reassert Canada's sovereignty over the North, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday.

The ships will be custom-built, state of the art and made in Canada, Harper said during a ceremony at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt on Vancouver Island.

Based on the only existing defence policy the military has to use, the Canadian navy produced this strategic planning document entitled Leadmark: The Navy's Strategy for 2020. (Which has now disappeared from the navy's frontpage on the DND site.)

Nowhere in that document will you see a specific requirement identified by the navy for any ice-resistant ships. Which means that the Harper government has inverted the process and is now telling the navy, not what needs to be done, but exactly how to do it.

There is a large component in the navy who will disagree that six to eight ice-resistant ships are the way to go. There are cheaper, more effective options. And as for the ships Harper is touting:

He said the ships' hulls will be reinforced with steel and be able to crunch though ice up to a metre thick — allowing the ships to patrol the length of the Northwest Passage during months when a Canadian naval presence is necessary.

The vessels will be armed and will have a helicopter landing pad, Harper added.

A meter? That's a little on the wimpy side. There is every chance that, in order to patrol the length of the Northwest Passage, an ice-breaker would have to be capable of taking on ice up to two meters thick with a "reverse and ram" configuration which would give it a capability of taking on up to three meters of ice.

Of course they will be armed - but to do what and deal with what threats? You don't just say they will be armed, fitted with helicopters and send them out patrolling. As much as Harper makes it sound simple, each mode of warfare requires special attention by the designers, builders and crews. Are they to be designed to fit into a task organization or are they expected to be a self-contained anti-submarine, anti-aircraft, anti-surface platform? What is the defensive range expected to be? What is their proposed endurance? How are they to be resupplied? Since they're only ice-resistant, what type of ship will be there to groom the ice-path? (Oh shit! You forgot about that!)

The tell:

The government estimates the project will cost $7 billion and take five years.

Harper also said the government will construct a deepwater port somewhere in the far north, with the location to be announced soon. The port will be used as an operation base for the new patrol vessels.

There is no plan. Harper is making this up as he goes. This question still applies.

In truth, the Canadian navy would love to have Arctic patrol ships... after all other requirements and resource demands are met. They would also love to have the people to man them, or has it been lost on this government that there are really only nine crews to run twelve frigates?

The announcement has no timeline, no real funding, an estimate that means nothing and no materiel project. The five years Harper is talking about could start in 2050 for all we know.

If you ask an admiral in the Canadian navy what is the most suited vessel, (assuming the need for a vessel), to patrol the Arctic archipelago, most would answer, a submarine with under-ice capability.

That idea sank at the hands of the Mulroney government when they too meddled in trying to tell the navy what type of ship they needed without properly consulting the experts.

The question remains: Is this government going to acknowledge the dismal state of affairs in the Canadian Coast Guard and do something to bring that fleet up to an acceptable standard?

No... I suppose not.

Arctic ice-breaking is a coast guard job. So why is the navy getting ice-breakers

It looks like the Conservative cabinet has a bit of a leak in it. This is information which dribbled out suggesting that the federal cabinet is looking at six new ships for the Canadian Navy.

A key federal cabinet committee has given the go-ahead for a plan to construct six corvette-sized Arctic patrol vessels, The Canadian Press has learned.

The cabinet priorities and planning committee approved the program to build the 100-metre-long, 6,000-tonne warships within the last 10 days, according to defence and political sources.

The patrol vessels, which are almost as large as the navy's frigates, are a step down from the armed Arctic icebreakers that the Conservatives promised in the last election campaign and will likely not be in service before 2015.

Nevertheless, said one political source “it'll be good for the military, good for Canadian industry and the Arctic is critical to our national interest.”

Cabinet is said to have authorized a two-year definition phase in which the scope of the shipbuilding project will be laid out. Much of the cost of the new vessels — about $300-million apiece — is being put off until later years.

The vessels, which will be capable of smashing through “fresh ice,” are expected to be based on the Royal Norwegian Navy's Svalbard class design, said a military source. That particular type vessel is armed with a 57-millimetre deck gun, missile-launching tubes and also has a helicopter pad.

First off, this non-announcement is just that. There's nothing to announce. This is more exploratory than anything else. It will be at least two years before there is even a reasonable artist's conception available. The 2015 "in service" estimate is rather ambitious and the $300 million estimated cost per copy is ridiculously low.

I smell something here. I expect the Harperites will announce this ship procurement program as being the fulfillment of their election promise to build armed ice-breakers, a patently stupid idea and one the navy didn't want to touch with a ten foot pole.

These ships are not full-blown ice-breakers. They are actually "ice resistant" which means they can handle being in the ice but have neither the hulls nor the engineering to break anything more than fresh surface cover about a meter thick.

Rob Huebert, of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, said the corvettes are a good step, but they cannot be the only solution for the Arctic.

“It makes sense only if the coast guard is getting its icebreaking fleet recapitalized,” he said in an interview.

“If this is just a cheap buyout to allow the navy not to get icebreakers, and the coast guard does not get its very old icebreakers replenished, then we're going to be in a lot of hurt.”

In truth, the idea of the navy conducting patrols in the Arctic presents a problem. The better sovereignty tool would be a renewed coast guard and an enlarged RCMP marine section. If Canada is claiming the Arctic archipelago as territorial waters then the navy is the wrong outfit to conduct sovereignty - unless the government is so insecure in Canada's claim that it suspects there will be a need for combat ships in that area.

Given that Canada has the worlds longest coastline and is a maritime trading nation, maintaining a viable navy is critically important. In that respect one of the prime considerations for the navy has been to maintain a fleet of patrol frigates and destroyers capable of securing our sea frontiers and protecting our sea lines of communication. The navy, while they will not turn their noses up at six patrol ships, desperately wants to replace the old tribal-class destroyers and have a program on stream to replace the frigates once they reach the end of their useful lives.

The Canadian Coast Guard is in desperate need of new ice-breakers and it seems odd, (well, it would seem odd if it weren't the Conservatives), that the navy is being told to explore ice-capable ships before the Coast Guard's ice-breaking capability is renewed.

Odd... unless... oh no.

Are the Harperites going to allow the Coast Guard to fade into obscurity and shift the role to the navy? That would create an armed coast guard.

The ship they are looking at building is based on the Norwegian Svalbard class, a purpose-built coast guard vessel designed for the northernmost Norwegian seas and territorial waters. Given the structure of Canada's naval, coast guard and marine law enforcement establishments, providing ice-capable, limited-role ships to the Navy for the purpose of patrolling territorial waters makes little sense.