I'll start by saying that the fundamental issue is political will, and the understanding by folks like you that the country actually needs military capability, that Canada's contribution internationally matters, and that you'll be held to account in a decade's time for the state of what you have bequeathed your successors. That political will actually requires not only money but also policy.
I'll give you one example: the Canada First defence policy. When it was published I got more traction in Ottawa, because I could roll the document up and hit people with it. It said what the government said it was going to do. An accumulation of government speeches is a start toward policy. A document actually makes a difference in motivating the people around town who need to be motivated. You'll understand that the people who don't have the ships aren't the ones who can do anything about getting the ships. It's really the political direction that motivates this town.
The only other part to the process that's lower is execution. Execution had, for some period of time, suffered from paralysis...well, delay due to risk as people tried to deal with the fact that acquiring warships is inherently the most complex undertaking a country will pursue. There is risk at every stage of designing and building warships, and yet we've done it successfully in the past for decades. There has to be some trade-off between the political, the reputational, the financial, and all of the various risks that people in this town are paid to deal with. If they don't deal with them expeditiously, the operational risk for the country and for the governments to follow rises.
The fact that the navy doesn't have ships is not the problem. The problem is that the government doesn't have maritime security. We need people to make decisions and mitigate risk quickly and get on with reducing the operational risks that will come a decade hence.