Navy scoured eBay for parts to keep ships afloat
OTTAWA — Navy mechanics in Halifax had to scour the Internet and use eBay to find parts for one of its two supply ships, newly released government records show.
But the briefing notes obtained by The Canadian Press, prepared for navy commander Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, show the technicians were fighting a losing battle to keep HMCS Preserver on duty.
The documents show many of the parts on the 45-year-old ship were “beyond acceptable limits” because corrosion issues had begun to compromise the vessel’s structural integrity.
National Defence said last year that both Preserver and its sister ship HMCS Protecteur — gutted by a dangerous at-sea fire — would be retired before replacement ships arrived.
“It will be very difficult to continue to confidently operate her at sea until her planned divestment date in 18 months,” said the May 9, 2014 briefing note.
The navy had planned to replace both ships, but the Conservative government pulled the plug in August 2008 because industry proposals were proving too costly. The new program is still up to eight years way from delivering new ships.
It has long been known the ships were in precarious shape and getting worse, but the briefing said it “was no longer viable to expend limited resources” to keep them going.
The notes make evident the department’s frustration that the ships were not retired on schedule. Technicians would fix one broken part and “once this is fixed, the next question is which equipment or system will be the next to fail.”
Protecteur was recently decommissioned, while a formal ceremony for Preserver has yet to be announced.
Since the original manufacturers long ago stopped making spare parts, a “disproportionate amount of time” was being used to source replacements, “some of which have been procured via eBay,” the documents found.