Evidence of meeting #34 for National Defence in the 42nd 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.
4:15 p.m.
Chairman, Chantier Davie Canada Inc.
Going from that to building 180-metre naval auxiliary vessels is a tough one.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
I will resist going down that road any further, I guess. Certainly the facility in Victoria works on some of the largest cruise ships in the world. They work on very large ships.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Well, let's try not to go there.
The second thing you suggested was that somehow you could—
4:15 p.m.
Chairman, Chantier Davie Canada Inc.
How many blocks is the joint support ship being built in at Seaspan?
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
I'm not going down this road with you, as I just said.
Another thing you suggested was that somehow you can take the contract for the second supply ship, rip it out of the existing contracts, and give it to you—
4:15 p.m.
NDP
4:15 p.m.
Chairman, Chantier Davie Canada Inc.
No, we weren't proposing that. What we were saying was that now that they have a formula to fill this urgent need for the naval supply ships, you could go back to the decision that was made by the previous government in 2013, where they prioritized the naval supply ships over the polar icebreaker, and you could build the polar icebreaker first. We could build a second Resolve to see us through to a point, and if you still want to do the joint support ship later on—
4:15 p.m.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
But there's a company that already has a contract to do that work.
4:15 p.m.
NDP
4:15 p.m.
Chairman, Chantier Davie Canada Inc.
But we've just been contracted by the government to do it.
4:15 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Federal Fleet Services Inc.
To be clear, there's no attempt here to interfere with the work that Seaspan has received under the letter of interest or the umbrella agreement. That's not the intent here. The intent is to say that right now the system is not producing.
In Emerson's report last year, chapter 10 says that the ships are rusting out faster than the capacity that's currently contracted by the Government of Canada to replace these ships. This applies to ferries, this applies to icebreakers, and this applies to warships. The Canadian government will unfortunately be faced with a situation where it will have to buy ships overseas and bring them to Canada, thereby not filling a lot of middle-class jobs. A lot of people will not receive jobs because of a planning issue.
Mr. Garrison, I know where you're going, and we're not trying to.... I think Mr. Vicefield's point was that circumstances have changed in the last seven years since this was started. Maybe it's worthwhile saying, for the cost savings and for the time savings and in view of what's happening in the Arctic, that we do not want to take any work away from Seaspan. Maybe give them the icebreaker to build, the Diefenbaker, get that going first, have us finish a second Resolve so that we can cover off the navy's requirements, and then have them finish the JSS after that.
I mean, we're talking about 10-year projects here, but to believe that we'll have an Arctic icebreaker in the next 10 years.... Find me an international expert who'd be willing to put his name to that. Meanwhile, the Russians are building 11 icebreakers, of which seven, I think, are nuclear.
We're not trying to business-interfere. That's not our intent. Our whole message is that there's capacity. We're working with a lot of companies and we're getting a lot of our product source from the west coast, so we're bringing jobs. We have a pan-Canadian team. We're just trying to say that the current capacity is not producing the ships. We want to help the Government of Canada produce ships and bring jobs to Canada.
I will point out that I mentioned in French when I started my comments—I don't know if all of you had simultaneous translation going on—that we're very thankful in terms of the Government of Canada right now, because we actually have three allied nations looking at the Resolve class. We can compete on price point and on capability, and they want Canadian-quality products. Our tier-one suppliers across Canada are fantastic. Foreigners are now coming to Canada, looking at Davie shipbuilding and Federal Fleet Services, and saying, “We love your model. We can't believe it. We'd like to get some of that.”
Is that happening elsewhere? I don't believe it is.
We're not here to castigate. We're trying to say that we have a good thing going. Mr. Vicefield talked about 1,200 workers today.
Mr. Robillard, there are 2,000 other people who are waiting for a job at the shipyard.
We're ready to go. There are no infrastructure changes required here. We're ready to go.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Thank you.
I'll turn the floor over to Ms. Alleslev for seven minutes.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Leona Alleslev Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you very much.
I'd like to go back to that capacity question. I understand that the Louis S. St-Laurent was a bit delayed getting in. I'm interested in understanding why, and how that is or is not affecting your surplus capacity.
You also bid on the most recent project. How much capacity will that take, and if you were to be successful, what would that leave? Give us an idea of what type of surplus capacity we're actually looking at and the capability that goes with that.
4:20 p.m.
Chairman, Chantier Davie Canada Inc.
In terms of the Louis S. St-Laurent, I'd probably defer to John on that.
When you say it came in late, do you mean it came into the shipyard late? It's not there yet. I think it arrives in a few weeks.
4:20 p.m.
Vice-President, Commercial, Federal Fleet Services Inc.
She arrives in the middle of February. She had to be redeployed for a little bit longer period in the St. Lawrence, so she was delayed getting to the shipyard.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Leona Alleslev Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
That was no result of Davie's capacity...?
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Leona Alleslev Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
No, but the reason you couldn't take it in was that you already had the other ship.
4:20 p.m.
Chairman, Chantier Davie Canada Inc.
No. This is a big shipyard, even by international standards. I would say it's probably the third- or fourth-largest shipyard in North America. It is a very big yard.
In terms of spare capacity, first of all, we're not restricted by labour availability. As Spencer was saying in French, we have 1,200 workers at the moment. We have CVs from another 2,700 people, and about 1,000 of those are actually skilled shipbuilders who are ready to work, people who have 10, 20, 30 years of actual shipbuilding experience.
In terms of capacity, we have two slipways that could be used. We have half a dry dock and a whole other dry dock. If we took on this program to do the conversion of some of these icebreakers, the ones we're proposing to buy out of the oil and gas market, we would still have capacity for new builds, because we have the construction slipways. If you came to the yard, I'd be happy to show you exactly what I mean. It's a bit hard to do here. There is also subcontracting, as John said.
Through this program, we just delivered these two vessels for export to Norway, these very large 130-metre subsea construction vessels. For that, we used six different shipyards and metal fabricators throughout Quebec, as we were proposing for the NSPS. The blocks are built in the different yards and you have them brought by barge, by road, or by rail to the shipyard, and then you put them together there. That's something that everyone should really be doing.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Leona Alleslev Liberal Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON
Can you give us a feel for the balance between government work and commercial work in your shipyard?