You know the events of last month in the south Pacific with HMCS Protecteur and the fire. It is a single-hulled ship—and we've known this for a very long time; that ship is older than some of you—so it can't go into half of the harbours in the world because it doesn't meet MARPOL regulations. We've known this. It costs millions and millions in upkeep, and that it caught on fire and is now being towed back and probably can't be repaired should be almost a source of national embarrassment.
I'm not here necessarily to talk about the speed of procurement, but clearly it has taken far too long to replace the joint support ship. The unfortunate thing is that in each iteration where we look to buy the joint support ship, we find we just can't afford it, so we reduce its capability. Then we start the cycle all over again. The problem is that every single year you wait to buy a ship, you lose something in the vicinity of $200 million to $250 million in purchasing power. Delay that over five years, and there goes another ship you might have had. There goes another frigate you might have had. The speed of the procurement process has everything to do with the net effect that we're going to deliver.
However, to go back to two things about the navy, if we have aspirations to having a global presence, those joint support ships are critical because what gives us independence of action as a country is that we can support our frigates or our ships overseas. If we don't want to do that, then we don't have to buy them. It's back to the strategic consideration.
I would even suggest to you that in the foreseeable future, when the French are bringing an amphibious vessel called the Mistral to Halifax, I would strongly advise your committee to visit. It would be, I think, an eye-opener in terms of the capability that Canada could have.
Are 12 frigates enough, given that we also have a cycle of things that have to go into refit every five years? In net effect, what we have at this moment is maybe nine or ten capable frigates. The Tribal class destroyers, also at close to 40 years old, are being tested beyond their endurance. Quite frankly, while they're potentially capable as a training vessel, I don't think they're capable anymore as a war-fighting vessel.
Then you look at a country like Canada in the Caribbean, in our contribution to the counter-narcotics effort, we see it's all being driven by MCDVs. It's not being driven by first-line ships. Why? Because we just don't have enough or ones modern enough—