Evidence of meeting #14 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ships.
A recording is available from Parliament.
1:55 p.m.
Conservative
1:55 p.m.
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Great. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Choi, in your excellent submission to this committee, one of the statements you made is that warships should serve as a tool of Canadian foreign policy.
You talked about the fact that the Halifax shipyard could produce 25% of combatant capacity for North America. You looked at it in broader geostrategic considerations.
Can you weigh in on that or explain what you meant by that?
2 p.m.
Consultant, Research Fellow, Doctoral Candidate, University of Calgary, As an Individual
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.
2 p.m.
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
You mentioned in your submission that this can be leveraged in discussions with Americans when the topic concerns Canada's willingness and ability to pull our weight in NATO. Can you unpackage for us how this strengthens Canada's position?
How does this capacity strengthen our geostrategic positioning vis-à-vis other partners? I thought that was interesting, and it's something that hasn't really been discussed in testimony at this committee thus far.
It strengthens our hand—
April 8th, 2022 / 2 p.m.
Consultant, Research Fellow, Doctoral Candidate, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Absolutely. I think it does.
It comes down to the whole question of, is the 2% of GDP metric a good one for measuring a country's contribution to the alliance's security protocols. If we include the ability to actually build massive high-end warships, that is a major consideration that you wouldn't include as part of your 2% GDP that NATO considers because it's a shipbuilding that has an industrial capacity rather than technically military spending. It's about that manufacturing base that's not included but which you could bring up in negotiations.
We know the Americans have demonstrated over the previous administration a certain willingness to highlight a lack of contributions by other members. By highlighting these lesser known, lesser highlighted elements of how Canada actually contributes to the overall defence of the alliance, it's a very solid chip or card in our deck.
We also have to remember that even in a general context Canada is in a geographic situation very similar to the United States', but we operate with one-tenth of the population and one-fifteenth of the GDP. All of our security concerns are predominantly on the other side of two giant moats—the two oceans—so we need to be constantly abroad and present, much like the United States does, but we have much fewer resources for it. Our ability, nevertheless, to make use of what we have and to be constantly present with our presence abroad makes us a very unusual country and makes it very hard for us to compare ourselves with other countries that are otherwise similar in size in terms of GDP.
2:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Robert Gordon Kitchen
Thank you, Mr. Kusmierczyk.
With that we've come to the end of our questions. I would like to thank the witnesses for your appearance and testimony today.
Professor Choi, thank you for your insight. It's greatly appreciated.
Admiral Norman, I would like to publicly thank you for your service to this country. Thank you for being with us today. On a personal note, Admiral, I would ask you if you wouldn't mind passing on my best wishes and hellos to your father, General Norman, and your mother.
Thank you, and I thank them for their service to this country.
With that, the public portion of our meeting is now complete.
We will now proceed to the in camera portion of the meeting.
I'm about to suspend the meeting.
As members of the committee know, you'll have to go offline if you're on Zoom and then come back on using the logo and identifications that were on the form that was sent to you.
That said, I will suspend the meeting temporarily.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
