An Unassailable Process of Determination

Well, well, congratulations to Halifax and Vancouver, and condolences to Levis, Quebec. Two shipyards awarded contracts through an indisputably-fair selection process, and one, which has recently been involved in bankruptcy proceedings, hastily preparing a late-entrance bid, failed.
Halifax has been awarded a drydock contract valued at $25-billion which will keep Haligonians whose profession is ship-building busy for a generation.

Irving Shipbuilding, Halifax, has good reason to celebrate their wild, good fortune. Seaspan Marine in Vancouver, with its $8-billion contract award to build non-navy and coast guard ships will see its employment opportunities burgeon, bringing employment stability to that sector for a good time to come. Davie Shipyard in Levis, well, that's just the way it is, and this time Quebec certainly can not claim to have been deliberately side-stepped for political reasons.

If politics had come into the equation, a Conservative government with very little support in Quebec would most certainly have attempted to exert its authority to gain more credence within the province by proffering a contract that Davie clearly was not substantially prepared to fulfill. That the Royal Canadian Navy is, in any event, headquartered in Halifax with its fleet built there to begin with, seems a more than fitting tribute to both tradition and practicality.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government were sensible beyond the tradition of political interference to remove themselves from the bidding competition entirely, tasking Public Works bureaucrats with that evaluation and decision-making. Three teams of civil servants reviewed the bids against set criteria, overlooked by KPMG and evaluations reviewed by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Tellingly, the largest factor with a value of 60 points out of a total of 100 was recognition of the current state of preparedness of each of the shipyards and their capacity to proceed, upon award. Irving led Seaspan for the combat portion, gaining a score of 82.8 to Seaspan's 74.9. Giving Irving the military contract, and Seaspan the non-combat contract for coastguard and scientific vessels.

The exhilaration felt in Nova Scotia and British Columbia is not echoed in Quebec, understandably. But Davie shipyards, now under new ownership, whose bid was underwritten by the Province of Quebec, still may bid for the production of smaller ships and repair and refit work, so they're not necessarily shut out of the picture altogether. They simply were not first-choice.

Knowles Consultancy Services and Hill International Inc., represented by Peter Woods, overlooking the fairness and transparency of the awarding was unstinting in his praise, as "...one of the best, if not the best" process he had reviewed during his career. "I found no fairness deficiencies", he said. A report from the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries estimate a prediction of 15,000 jobs to come out of the process, over a period of decades.

Subcontractors across Canada will benefit from spending on the procurement program. There are critics who hold that the vessels of all types could have been acquired from international shipbuilders at an estimated 20% lower overall cost, but then, what would happen with those 15,000 jobs, and other jobs that will result from keeping the program within Canada? It's the price we pay to ensure that we have built-in-Canada vessels both for our military and coast guard.

Need we be surprised that Nycole Turmel, interim head of the NDP is complaining bitterly that Quebec was overlooked, blaming the federal government for leaving Davie Shipyards in a "more fragile position"? "The Conservatives have to do much more to ensure that Quebec shipbuilding capacity remains stable and that long-term skilled jobs are created. We have to build this industry everywhere, not pick winners and losers like the Conservatives have done."

Except that they did not. It was a practical decision reached by a completely politics-free group of neutral public service bureaucrats whose profession it is to acquire for the country the best possible outcome for a costly outlay of tax dollars. The official opposition's own shipbuilding critic, Peter Stoffer, declared his satisfaction with the process.

And so should we all.