I think the situation we find ourselves in right now is one that is a historical challenge. We're looking at a fleet for the Canadian Coast Guard as well as a fleet for the Royal Canadian Navy that are past their service lives.
My background is in commercial shipping. I spent many years in the Netherlands and Houston, Texas. Ships are supposed to last 25 or maybe 30 years. A lot of our vessels are quite older than that.
From a government perspective, I believe we need to ensure that we have a constant build program ongoing, so that as ships start to reach their end of life, there's a continuous renewal.
At the same time, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we can't forget the fact that Canada is a maritime nation, whether we like it or not. Commercial ships are operating on the Great Lakes, east coast, west coast and internationally. I think that marrying government work and commercial work is extremely important.
The shipyards that were shut down need a boost. We need to be resuscitated, and we have been, through the national shipbuilding strategy. We need to be here to support our commercial sector. For many years, the ships that we're currently repairing in our shipyards in Ontario were going down to the United States. We completely lost capabilities within those yards. We're rebuilding that now.
The government work is critical to allow us to rebuild that capacity, so that in the future we can not only build ships for the government, but we can build ships for the commercial sector and repair ships for the commercial sector and government.