Yet another procurement shipwreck

The National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy (NSPS), a mammoth naval rebuild and boondoggle unveiled by the Harper Conservatives amid much self-congratulatory chortling in the fall of 2011, is coming apart at the seams. The catalyst, oddly enough, was a fire aboard the Royal Canadian Navy’s HMCS Protecteur last year, which pushed the venerable old supply vessel into an unexpected retirement.

The loss of the Protecteur has meant that, until new supply ships are built (or a commercial tanker is refurbished to serve as a stopgap), the Navy will remain a glorified coastal patrol. We’re back to something like the Antonov days, when Prime Minister Paul Martin’s government spent weeks scrounging for Russian-built air taxis to ferry the military’s disaster response team to Sri Lanka. Except now it’s the entire Canadian Navy that is becalmed. Such as it is.

Enter the NSPS. Vancouver-based Seaspan and Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding received a whopping $34 billion in federal promissory notes — these were not contracts, though some have since been inked with Irving — in the rollout of the program in 2011. Nearly four years later, construction of Arctic patrol ships on the East Coast, and fisheries and science vessels on the West, is apparently staggering ahead at last.

But Seaspan, which is also slated to construct new supply ships for the Navy at an estimated cost of more than $2 billion, is able to handle only one build at a time. Which means the first supply ship is still years away from construction, let alone completion. The federal schedule says work will begin in 2017. That appears to be, given the historical pattern with such projects, an aggressive target, to put it politely.

Then there’s the Quebec-based Davie Shipyard. Having missed out on the NSPS sweepstakes — it was insolvent at the time — the yard is now a going concern under new owners, and is lining up for its share of the spoils. Davie has proposed to refurbish a commercial tanker and lease it to the Navy as a supply stopgap, at an estimated annual cost of between $35 million and $65 million, depending on the length of the lease, plus $12 million for crewing. The proposal seems sensible enough, as far as it goes, and there is no denying the Navy’s need.

But there are a couple of wrinkles: first, neither Seaspan nor Irving is keen on seeing Davie getting in on the NSPS action; Irving has in fact advanced a supply-ship stopgap of its own. Second, Davie’s yard just happens to be in the Quebec City-area riding of Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, one of five Conservative MPs in Quebec. When Defence Minister Jason Kenney announced last week that Ottawa is in discussions with Davie about its proposal — discussions, mind you, not a done deal — the caterwauling from its rivals was instantaneous.

Given the politics and the timing, it was impossible for this not to be deemed regional pork-barrelling, whatever the merits of Davie’s plan. The upshot is that the NSPS, which drew bipartisan praise when it was unveiled and was supposedly the one procurement feather in the Harper government’s cap, is unfolding just like all the rest: slow, costly, mired in controversy and skewed beyond recognition by political considerations.

So, we will ask the question again: can it be so hard to supply this country’s military with the ships, planes, trucks and weapons it needs, in a transparent and competitive process whose sole purpose is to get the best equipment for the least money — whether sourced domestically or from abroad? Is it rocket science? Is it magic? Surely, it is neither.

For decades, under both Conservative and Liberal regimes, this country’s defence procurement has been in shambles. It will remain so until somebody — in government or out — starts putting the needs of the military ahead of their own.