By all accounts, it was a politically watertight process that produced Wednesday’s award of a $25-billion combat-ship contract to Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding and an $8-billion contract to Seaspan Marine of Vancouver for non-combat ships: No politicians involved, only bureaucrats; oversight from an outside accounting firm; names of the bidders hidden from the deciders (though you’d have to be a dim decider not to figure out which firms “Company A,” “Company B” and “Company C” actually represented); the Prime Minister told the result only after the winning bidders were informed.
There was only one small problem: The bidding was limited to Canadian shipyards. Reporting on the process, CTV’s Craig Oliver got all gooey about how this country used to be big in shipbuilding, during the Second World War and before, in the days of wooden ships — he didn’t say whether he had childhood memories of Canadian square-riggers — and how this big new dump of money would restore the industry in Canada.
Well, it probably won’t. That was then. This is now. Get over it. Shipbuilding is now a mainly Asian business. The Chinese and South Koreans are slugging it out for world domination. Even Japan, which used to be world number one, is fading in importance. Europe and the United States are shadows of their former selves. We are barely a ping on the sonar screen, if that.
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Watson: Hope they float (1),Related:
Ivison: Everyone wins in shipbuilding contract but Quebec and the taxpayers
Watson has missed the one important point that caused Canada to limit the bidding to Canadian suppliers. It was a strategic decision to ensure we are capable of producing military hardware today and into the future. It’s one thing to buy made in China tee-shirts but the Walmartization” of our military hardware just to get a lower price is a step too far.
As China continues to build naval capacity well beyond its requirements for defensive purposes, the last thing Canada needs is for our ships to be “held up” in the queue to say nothing of relying upon a potential adversary to provide quality assurance on the construction of a vessel it will possibly have to face in some future military engagement.
So it costs a few bucks more. The day may not be too far off when the strategic sense of this decision becomes all too evident.
So the Ivison piece says “Everyone wins in shipbuilding contract but Quebec and the taxpayers.”
Wrong…..whenever Quebec “wins” something, taxpayers ALWAYS lose. Thus, in this case, Quebec lost and taxpayers won.