Within North America, the two main countries with a large ocean-going navy are the United States and Canada. The U.S., over the last several decades, due in part to their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have really let their navy become their red-headed stepchild. They're not giving it the attention that you would expect from a country that depends upon a free flow of global trade. Part of this means that their defence industrial base has been really challenged, especially the naval shipbuilding side, where they technically could build more ships that they currently, but they haven't been able to do so. This leads to layoffs, lack of efficiency and higher costs on their end.
Right now, they're at a point where they're really stretched out in their ship capacity. They have two shipyards that are in service right now, building their heavy destroyers, and then they have one that built the much maligned combat ship, that's been converted to go into new frigates. They tried to add a fourth yard this year, but that got cancelled. It was not approved. By 2025, they're going to have only three shipyards building surface combatants. At roughly one ship per year at each yard, maybe if they're lucky, depending on how the budget goes, they may get two at two of those shipyards.
In certain situations, we might end up with the Halifax shipyard being one of four shipyards in North America that produces high-end surface combatants.
If you follow one of my policy proposals and you split the CSC bills across two shipyards, Canada ends up having two L5 North American shipyards that can build these heavy surface combatants. That's a major capacity for North America and for our allies, as well, if they decide to take us up on that excess capacity that will build up.