National Defence committee  We are in discussions with the navy and with our colleagues at Public Services and Procurement Canada to look at a batching strategy, we would call it. In the history of Canada's navy, we have never bought.... Even with the Canadian patrol frigates, there were two contracts for s

National Defence committee  If I could just add that the strategy we are working on is to recapitalize the navy and the Coast Guard. Yes, there are a number of ships right now. There are ships in contract. What will come after that continues to be an open dialogue—what's the future threat environment, and

National Defence committee  That would be small and medium enterprises, be they shipyards or otherwise. For example, on the west coast at Seaspan, they have opted not to do pipe spools or pieces of pipe in the yard. They've subcontracted that out, so they're looking across the supply chain for the most effi

National Defence committee  I would not say there's a specific study, but perhaps I could give a bit of context. The use of industry to provide support, and how we have traditionally done this, is levels of maintenance. The sailors on board ship do first-level maintenance. I think you had previously asked

National Defence committee  The strategy itself, of building in Canada, is actually to reduce that very risk. If we were to go offshore and acquire these assets—and we see it in other areas of military equipment—we would be absolutely beholden to export licences and other things. Bringing it into Canada is

National Defence committee  I'm really not the right person, in the context of capability and future capabilities. That would be our vice chief, chief of force development, and others. What I will say from experience, having a couple of times been involved in looking at nuclear submarines in Canada, is tha

National Defence committee  I apologize, but I would like to add something to Ms. Campbell's comments about technology. When you look around the world at submarine technology and the advances in air-independent propulsion in fuel cells, there is a lot happening in this area which in the future could be us

National Defence committee  If I may add to that, on the innovation, of course, our minister, Minister Sajjan, is extremely interested in this area, which is a key part of the defence policy review. He's challenged us to see how we can further use innovation in working, as indicated, with Innovation, Scienc

National Defence committee  A generation ago, the distinction in size and firepower between a frigate and a destroyer would have been quite different. Nowadays, they've probably morphed in size of ship. I think what has happened is, as we've retired our Tribal-class destroyers, the two capabilities that we

National Defence committee  We have about a decade, so you're exactly correct. We've structured all 12 ships, as far as the layout of compartments and spaces and cabling go, but we've only fitted four with the command and control capability, since you only need one on each coast. We can actually move the eq

National Defence committee  Yes, it's specifically New Zealand, not Australia.

National Defence committee  I was just saying that Australia had the same ships. It is part of it, yes. I would say in the overall context of the work that we did and the capabilities that showed up. For the New Zealand navy, when they were looking at all the capabilities and they looked around the world co

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. You said that the submarines are at the end of their life, but that's not quite true. This may be a positive effect of an unfortunate situation, but at the very beginning of their life in Canada, the submarines went to sea less often than was suggeste

National Defence committee  I would say that in the evolution of specifications by which we build ships, if you went back a generation ago, the military specification would have been the highest standard. That's still true, I would say, for our front-line combatants. The way we will design and build the Can

National Defence committee  Regarding the joint support ships, the ships themselves are based on a mature German design, the Berlin-class ship. We have acquired that design and brought it into the yard where we have a combined workforce. I have some people in the yard, engineers and others, working with a s