Mr. Chair, thank you. Committee members, thanks for this opportunity to testify. I'll introduce myself and my reasons for being here today.
I am a naval architect who emigrated to Canada in 1981. Since then, I have worked on every major Canadian government marine project, and on many other government and commercial shipbuilding projects worldwide. I retired from full-time employment at the end of 2020. I should emphasize that I am testifying today as an individual concerned Canadian citizen and not as a representative of any group or past employer.
You have already heard much testimony in this committee that the NSS has challenges and has had setbacks. My much blunter message is that NSS has failed and that it needs to be fixed or scrapped.
It's not delivering the ships the Canadian navy and Coast Guard need, and the few ships it has delivered have cost an indecent amount of money. We've become an international laughingstock. Broadly speaking, Canada is paying between three and five times the world price for ships and taking two to four times longer to get them.
We can't wait indefinitely for our new ships. Our navy and Coast Guard are rusting out. In the last few years, Canada has had to acquire more interim ships than new ones in order to fill gaps.
Let me review some comparative international projects.
I'll start with JSS. I was involved with JSS from 1998 until my retirement. In 2011, the project was awarded to Seaspan under NSS. In 2013, the decision was made to select the German Berlin class as the basis. Design work started in 2014 and construction in 2018. As of May 2022, assembly of the basic construction blocks is still not complete. My estimate is that the first ship may be completed by late 2025, perhaps 2026, with acceptance by the navy later. The project cost is currently estimated at about $4.1 billion for two ships and is likely to escalate further. The first ship will cost at least $2.5 billion.
The New Zealand maritime support ship Aotearoa is a brand new design, with a polar ice class that allows for Antarctic operations. She is technologically well in advance of JSS and roughly the same size and speed. Her design and build took almost exactly four years. The shipyard contract was $500 million Canadian. The Canadian project is roughly five times more expensive and is taking well over three times longer.
The Italian navy's new Vulcano was mentioned by a previous witness. She was awarded as a design contract in 2015 and commissioned in 2021, despite a major fire during construction. She also cost roughly $500 million Canadian.
Most of the ships under NSS are highly specialized vessels, so it is often difficult to find projects that look directly comparable. The Canadian offshore oceanographic science vessel and the South African navy equivalent are both designs by my ex-employer, with the much smaller Canadian ship being currently quoted at five times the cost of the South African vessel.
Another interesting recent project was the development of a large offshore patrol vessel for the Taiwan Coast Guard, a 5,000-tonne vessel with a 24-knot speed. Concept design to delivery took less than four years, and the cost of that four-ship program was slightly below $500 million Canadian. This Taiwanese vessel is different in concept from the Arctic and offshore patrol ship, but comparable in terms of complexity.
I was the program manager for AOPS from 2007 to 2010. AOPS is a cousin of the Norwegian Coast Guard's Svalbard, and my team had full access to costing for the Svalbard in order to support our own estimates, particularly for shipyard labour. We generally assumed that three times the European labour content would be needed. Based on the actual cost of AOPS, it seems that the true numbers are catastrophically worse. Given that the costs of the seventh and eighth ships are expected to be in excess of $1.5 billion, it seems that the situation is getting worse, not better. The Norwegian Coast Guard is now building three new ships that are bigger and more powerful for around $700 million in total.
Please note that these latest AOPS are not wanted or needed by either the navy or the Coast Guard. They are only being built to keep the shipyard busy until the surface combatant project is ready to move forward.
Fix NSS or scrap it. Frankly, I don't think it's fixable. There are fundamental flaws baked into its design. Much of the government's decision-making has been contracted out to what I'll describe as rent-seeking oligarchs whose interests don't appear to be aligned with those of the navy, the Coast Guard or the country.
Canada squandered billions of dollars on NSS and is at risk of wasting tens of billions more in the coming decades. We will not be giving the navy, the Coast Guard or Canada itself the ships they'll need.
This shouldn't be a partisan issue. Successive Conservative and Liberal governments share responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in. I implore this committee to look at the hard decisions that need to be taken to preserve our maritime safety and security capabilities.
Thank you.