Canada is in critical need of a new submarine fleet and it can’t go about acquiring one the way it did in the past, according to a new report.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute research report “Deadline 2036: Assessing the requirements and options for Canada’s future submarine force” analyzes Canada’s history of and use for submarines and examines the purchasing considerations for a future fleet.
“Decision-makers in Ottawa will have to make a difficult call in the next two years about the kind of submarine capability the RCN [Royal Canadian Navy] and the CAF [Canadian Armed Forces] need for the next half-century,” writes report author Jeffrey F. Collins, a political science professor at the University of Prince Edward Island.
Canada’s fleet currently has four diesel-electric Victoria-class submarines that were bought from the United Kingdom second hand in 1998 and they’ll be 50 years old by the time they are decommissioned between 2036 and 2042, the report noted.
The good news, Collins says, is that the Department of National Defence (DND) indicated that a “Canadian submarine patrol project” has been sanctioned. In mid-July, a DND spokesman told The Canadian Press that the CAF was establishing the project “to inform timely governmental decision-making about a potential replacement class of submarines, and avoid any gap in submarine capability.” Costs, requirements, and timelines have not yet been established for the project.
Collins says the timing of the DND announcement could not come any sooner since major defence procurement projects typically take 15 years or more.
Released in late September, the report outlines three options for purchasing submarines. They can be built domestically under the National Shipbuilding Strategy, they can be an off-the-shelf product that gets “Canadianized,” or they can be collaboratively built with another country.
