MAKE A DECISION ON SUBS: NAVY CHIEF

Billions needed to extend life of aging vessels

OTTAWA• The outgoing head of the navy says the government will have to decide soon whether to invest more money into Canada’s submarines so they can continue operating past the mid-2020s — or cut the ships adrift.

The Royal Canadian Navy’s four submarines have been plagued by problems since they were acquired from Britain in the 1990s. The most recent incident came last week when the HMCS Windsor broke down en route to a training exercise in Norway.

Vice- Admiral Mark Norman, however, said t he Windsor is now back up to full speed after the “hiccup.” In addition, he said, two of the other three subs will be completely operational and contributing to Canada’s power at sea in the next two years. All four vessels should then be good until the early to mid-2020s.

“I feel very optimistic about this,” Norman said in an interview. “We need the conversation in Canada to shift from the trials and tribulations of the Victoria class to why submarines are essential in a nation like Canada given our strategic context.”

The navy, however, is waiting to hear whether the government wants to extend the submarines’ lives so they can operate until the 2030s. A decision needs to be made “in the next year or two,” Norman said, so the necessary funds — which previous reports have put between $1.5 billion and $3 billion — can be set aside.

“The decision is tied to the fact that if we want to plan for another cycle, we have to get that into the investment plan, and that has to be programmed,” he said. “So we need some sort of indication that we’re going to continue to operate the submarines.”

Norman made the comments to the Citizen about a week before he was due to turn over command of the navy after three years.

He will become the vice chief of defence staff, the Canadian Armed Forces’ second- highest ranked officer, this week.

The interview also coincided with the Liberal government announcing a new plan for building new warships to replace the navy’s retiring destroyers and frigates — a plan that Norman believes has finally put the largest single military procurement project in Canadian history on the right path after years of delays.

If true, that would set the shipbuilding program apart from what is happening to the air force, which continues to struggle with efforts to replace Canada’s aging CF-18 fighter jets.

Norman presided over one of the more challenging periods for the navy in recent memory as the navy’s old resupply ships were forced into early retirement, the destroyer fleet was largely unusable for operations, and the frigates were in dry dock for major retrofits.