Government Operations committee  The coast guard hadn't acquired a large vessel since the late 1980s. There had been no demand in Canada to build a large coast guard vessel since the Henry Larsen was turned out into our fleet. When I speak to the issue of shipyard capacity, one of the biggest pieces of demand i

Government Operations committee  The way I would approach it is to come back to this question of the gradual approach to contracting that Mr. Ring outlined: the ancillary, then the design, and then the construction approach. The ancillary contracts are about exploring some concepts with the yard to try to mana

Government Operations committee  There's not a huge amount of shipbuilding capability in Canada. In fact, what led to the NSPS was the knowledge that having the one-off approach for the big projects wasn't going to lead us to a productive environment where we could deliver ships with low risk and the kinds of sh

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The question is a really interesting one for somebody who is in the business of delivering an asset that could potentially have a life exceeding my own right now. We're operating the Louis S. St-Laurent, conceived of in the early 1960s, and it is still i

Government Operations committee  There is some inflationary coverage included in the numbers that I spoke to a little earlier, the $1.2 billion. We built those into our cost estimations. The polar icebreaker, for example, is a 10-year-long project, developed in 2008 for delivery in 2017. That number of $800 mill

Government Operations committee  Yes. There are a number of small vessels in the coast guard fleet. In fact, about two-thirds of our fleet of 116 to 118 vessels on any given day are made up of vessels under 1,000 tonnes, the cut-off line between large and small vessels. Mr. Leslie spoke of our lifeboat fleet,

Government Operations committee  Very clearly the requirements are set by the coast guard, for operational reasons.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. The budgets for the polar and the science vessels do add up to $1.2 billion. We're working to deliver those ships within those budgets. The budget for the polar icebreaker in that $1.2 billion is $800 million of that. Four science vessels are also in that package that

Government Operations committee  The polar icebreaker will be built in the Vancouver Shipyards.

Government Operations committee  That's subject to a long conversation on finishing the design work and some sequencing conversations we have to have with Vancouver Shipyards. Currently we project delivery of that vessel in 2017. That would imply cutting steel in about 2015.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. Mr. Ring is correct that each project has a different approach, in part in terms of timing, when we started the project, the arrival of the NSPS. For instance, some of our projects predate the NSPS, although we're bringing those projects into the strategy now. For th