Canada moves to get new Arctic patrol vessels

A key Canadian federal cabinet committee has given the go-ahead for a plan to construct six corvette-sized Arctic patrol vessels. The cabinet priorities and planning committee approved the program to build the 100-metre long, 6,000 tonne warships within the last 10 days, according to defence and political sources.

The patrol vessels, which are almost as large as the navy’s frigates, are a step down from the armed Arctic icebreakers that the Conservatives promised in the last election campaign and will likely not be in service before 2015.

Nevertheless, said one political source “it’ll be good for the military, good for Canadian industry and the Arctic is critical to our national interest.” The Cabinet is said to have authorized a two-year definition phase in which the scope of the shipbuilding project will be laid out. Much of the cost of the new vessels, about $300 million apiece, is being put off until later years.

The vessels, which will be capable of breaking through ?fresh ice?, are expected to be based on the Royal Norwegian Navy’s Svalbard class design, said a military source. That particular type vessel is armed with a 57-mm deck gun, missile-launching tubes and also has a helicopter pad. The recommendation has gone forward to prime minister Stephen Harper for final approval.

The government is deeply committed to protecting Canada’s security and to asserting sovereignty in the North, including the country’s internal Arctic waters and is proposing to build the ships in Canada under a competitive process similar to the Defence Department’s program to construct joint ships for the navy. Currently two consortiums, which involve foreign and domestic defence contractors, are vying to build three 28,000-tonne replenishment vessels.

The new ships were approved well before the Conservative government has had a chance to consider a key policy paper, the Canada First Defence Strategy. Last year, Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, who is responsible for the coast guard, was warned that the agency’s fleet was experiencing severe “rust out”‘ and needed to be replaced. As it stands, coast guard icebreakers are not due to begin being replaced until 2017.

Since the Tories were elected, there has been a fierce debate within National Defence over the party’s campaign promise to build three armed icebreakers to protect Arctic sovereignty.

Icebreaking has traditionally been a role for the Canadian Coast Guard — one it has been loathe to give up — and many have argued that if new ice-cutting ships were to be built they should go to that agency, not the military. In the end, the prohibitive $1 billion-per-vessel cost of armed icebreakers appears to have torpedoed the election promise. The navy was worried that such an ambitious program would seriously dent its well-laid plans to eventually replace its aging destroyers and frigates with a new single-class surface ship.