Submarines: to go Nuclear or Not?

"Canada's ability to exert influence in its vast maritime domain will be tested as the demand for resources and northern sea access increases in the coming decades. [Canada needs replacement submarines for its fleet of four diesel-electric aging submarine fleet, in recognition of countries like Russia and China's aggressiveness and the] relative decline [of the United States]."

"It wasn't that long ago that the only option for that [submarines capable of operating in and under ice in the Arctic] was to consider nuclear propulsion. [Now technology is sufficiently advanced to allow] a broader conversation about other options."

"[The U.S. is in decline] due to competing internal and external pressures including fleet overstretch, divided domestic institutions, quasi-isolationism, trade protectionism, and the return of great power rivalries for the first time in 80 years [placing more pressure on American allies]."

"With China and Russia building up their respective nuclear and non-nuclear submarine fleets, it will become harder for Canada to ignore the need to maintain its submarine capability."

Macdonald-Laurier Institute paper

 

"We need to move forward with a viable program to replace the current capability. And what that looks like, I don't know, but it starts by having what I would characterize as a mature, open and transparent conversation."

"[Complex procurements like this can take 12 to 15 years that] gives us one to two years to really get this project properly initiated and oriented."

"Defence expenditures in Canada are always subject to significant criticism [but even those who won't like the idea can be receptive] when the conversation is well informed."

Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, Canadian Navy

"Getting out of the sub business would mean that our friends and allies would take Canada even less seriously in defence matters than they do now."

"[It would also] effectively cede operational control over our coastal and Arctic waters to others, [both allies and enemies]."

Kim Nossal, professor emeritus, international relations, Queen's University

Canada purchased four Victoria-class submarines, including HMCS Corner Brook, from Britain in the late 1990s.

Canada has four aged and aging submarines in its fleet. These are submarines; the HMCS Chicoutimi, HMCS Corner Brook, HMCS Windsor and HMCS Victoria bought second-hand from Britain when it decided to focus on replacing its fleet with nuclear submarines and placed its diesel-engine fleet in mothballs. Canada bought them second-hand for $750 million in 1998 under the Chretien Liberal-led government. They were a headache from first delivery, having been mothballed and left to rust for five years in Britain. Repairing dents, rust, leaks, and fire-damage cost Canada infinitely more for its bargain-basement investment.

The succeeding Conservative-led government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper mused about replacing the four submarines with a nuclear fleet, but typically knew that such an expenditure would not sit well with the Canadian public, and shelved an idea whose time had come. Since then, the need to replace the fleet has only grown more urgent. The situation is not unknown to Canada's allies in NATO, where the country has failed to live up to NATO's requirement that member-countries expend an average of 4% of GDP on military preparedness. Canada's expenditure is under 1.3%

HMCS Windsor, one of Canada's four Victoria-class long range patrol submarines, in Halifax port in 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

The current federal government has allocated up to $10 billion to modernize and maintain its current submarine fleet, an allocation whose initiatives sees "serious questions remain" whether Canada will be ready with replacements by the time the fleet is decommissioned at some time between 2035 and 2042. Which may "not appear to be a particularly urgent timeline", commented Vice-Admiral Norman, who wrote the foreword on the report pointing out that complex procurements take years to effect.

The recent furor of the agreement between the United States, Great Britain and Australia to supply Australia with nuclear plans with a view to acquiring a nuclear fleet and cancelling its contract with France to build such a fleet, serves to place a focus on Canada's laid-back attitude to its own maritime defence at a time when Russia is claiming territorial waters in areas contested by Canada, and China is building an Arctic-capable fleet of its own. AUKUS has offended France, with the cancelled contract valued at $60 billion from its publicly-owned shipyard.

Canada's need for submarines capable of operating in and under the ice is paramount. The Royal Canadian Navy created a team beginning the process of current fleet replacement in July; all such ventures in Canada move at glacial speed, reflecting the relative disinterest of the government of the day focusing or failing to, on a theme likely to result in an "extremely controversial debate" over the necessity of Canada acquiring them to begin with, in the public mind. 

The current submarine fleet has spent more time undergoing maintenance and repairs dry-docked than it has operationally, requiring billions resulting from multiple problems with the submarines, from their delivery to the present. Even a British Member of Parliament expressed  his amazement that Canada would agree to purchase the aged, decommissioned British submarines, stating they were in a parlous state before delivery and Canada had made an extremely poor decision in acquiring them. As the old British maxim goes: 'penny-wise and pound-foolish'.

A 2003 estimate placed cost of four new submarines between $3 and $5 billion; "we can easily expect that 20-year-old estimate to be higher", pointed out the report. Not quite in the vicinity of Australia's projected $60-billion cost for its planned nuclear fleet, but substantially more than the now-modest cost of yesteryear. Canada requires those submarines for surveillance and intelligence, building alliances and deterring opponents, alongside monitoring Canadian waters. The report pointed out Russia's submarines are active in the Arctic and North Atlantic to an extent not seen since the Cold War era.

The fire damaged HMCS Chicoutimi, one of the Canadian military's four submarines, arriving at the Victoria Shipyards from Halifax in 2009.  Photograph By BRUCE STOTESBURY, Times Colonist