To much news (Rivers, Icebreakers, Oh My!)

When I said that it was going to be a busy week, I wasn’t quite expecting it to be this busy. It’s been a long two days. We have had well over three dozen major announcements across multiple different departments.

Every time I try and get this done, there’s just more news that pops up. I was going to say most of this for the newsletter, but all of this is coming so fast. I thought I would make a separate post about this.

So apologies for the quiet I know many people have asked me about ongoing developments. I will only be talking about defence related topics for this. If you want to know about some of the other announcements made than I highly recommend you go to my Twitter.

Let’s start off with some of the smaller things that have been announced the last couple days!

Bill Blair has spent the last several days meeting with members of the Canadian defence industry as we continue to work on our next Defence Industrial Policy.

These consultations were planned last year and are part of the governments ongoing efforts to identify what gaps might currently exist in capacity, supply chains and workforce availability.

The government has committed 8.1 Billion dollars over the next five years, and upwards of 80 billion over twenty to help bolster Canada’s defence industrial base.

Canada has already released some of the funding from this to manufacturers to help them prep to expand on current ammunition lines. I should also note that IFM does have a munition supply requirement as well.

These kinds of talks often seem very boring and uneventful, but they form a very important step in developing a proper strategy. You can, of course, read more about that in my piece on production.

Minister Blair also announced that Mario Baril would be taking over the role of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces Ombudsperson for a term of five years. He replaces Robyn Hynes, whom has served in an interim role since July of last year.

Lastly, on the Blair front, the Minister of National Defence also received the Canadian Military Colleges Review Report. This builds off Recommendation 28and the first part of Recommendation 29 of former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Louise Arbour’s Independent External Comprehensive Review (IECR) Report.

I have provided a link here for those of you who wish to read it. It’s long, and I have yet to finish it myself, but I highly recommend it.

Of course, now we get to the big stuff this weekend, the things everyone has been messaging me about. As part of the rush to get announcements out, we had three confirmed contract signings, one for each of the Polar icebreakers and an official contract for the first three River-class destroyers.

If you follow my Twitter, you know I’ve been kind of waiting for the River-class news to drop. We all knew that the contract signing was coming, although I thought it was coming in April not March.

The announcement was fairly standard. Irving has been awarded the initial construction contract for the first three. This will be the smallest of the four batches, of which the remainder will have four each.

Of course, the big thing that comes from this is the financials. The contract covers the first six years of construction at the price point of $8 billion. This is fairly in line with what the Aussies are getting for their Hunter-class.

That 8 billion also includes building the initial parts supply chain, as well as developing maintenance and training strategies. Overall, despite the dooming In line with a lot of other countries current costs.

Keep in mind that a lot of funding is also going to Irving to build capacity. We don’t have the established shipyards that the Brits or the Aussies have. We are quite literally building this as we go.

The bigger number is the $22.2 billion that will cover the initial building and commissioning of the first three vessels. This is already caused quite a stir with people, but I want to alleviate some of the worries.

Canada does things differently if you don’t know, we take the cost, not only of the vessel itself, but also the lifetime and infrastructure cost and apply to the total cost of vessel.

22.2 billion sounds like a lot for three ships, but that cost estimate also includes things such as spare parts, Infrastructure upgrades, Jetty upgrades, munitions, etc.

These are cost that many other countries do not include in these estimates. That’s why it could be so hard to compare other countries to us, especially European countries operating heavily subsidized, national shipyards.

The timelines remain the same. The first River-class should be coming in service around 2031/2032 if all works out, than we should start receiving them at a rate of one every fifteen months.

Along with these numbers, the federal government claims that River-class initiative will contribute $719.3 million annually to Canada’s GDP and create or maintain 5,250 jobs annually over the 2025-2039 period. In addition, consumer spending by associated employees is estimated to contribute $191 million annually in additional GDP and 1,545 additional jobs annually to the Canadian economy during the same 15-year period.

To those of you still scared about the numbers, I wouldn’t be too worried We’ve expected these numbers for a while, and the government has known that these are the cost for a long time.

Both the conservative and the liberal party have committed to the full fifteen order, although that can change, I see no reason to worry about it at this point in time, at least so long as no bad news exists.

But this wasn’t the only contract award this week. In fact, we had two other ones, with both Seaspan and Davie being awarded separate contracts to develop their respective Polar-class icebreakers.

Seaspan was awarded a $3.15 billion contract to begin construction of CCGS Arpatuuq, with delivery scheduled for no later than 2032. This follows up on last years completion of both the initial prototype block, but also the finished design of the icebreaker.

Davie on the other hand Is where things start to get wild. The company was awarded a separate $3.25 billion contract to start work on their own Polar-icebreaker, but today we learned that she would not be using the same design as Arpatuuq.

CCGS Imnaryuaq will be built to Davies in-house Polar Max E design, something they inherited after taking over Helsinki Shipyards, although the design itself is based off of the Aker ARC148.

This was a shock to me in itself, as Davie has been pushing the Polar Max design for years to no avail.

For those unaware, compared to the Vard-designed Arpatuuq, the Polar Max E comes in a bit smaller, at 140m and ~22000 tons, so not terribly smaller. She is PC2+ rated, and claimed to be the most powerful non-nuclear icebreaker ever created.

She features many of the same features as Arpatuuq, with numerous scientific facilities, a large moon pool, and a dedicated workshop for helicopters and other unmanned systems.

As one can tell, she isn’t nearly as science-focused as Arpatuuq. She lacks some of the features of her big sister, notably lacking the Ro/Ro capability and A-Frame, two really cool things that I liked, but makes up for it in her transport and support capabilities.

I thought that would be the most shocking thing about this but right after I was proven wrong. Not only will ue Davie’s design, but the initial construction will NOT take Place in Canada but in Helsinki.

That’s right, they not only convinced them to build their design, but also to start construction at Helsinki shipyard. As part of this agreement, Canadian workers will go to Helsinki to start work and train on how to build icebreakers.

Of course, Helsinki is the yard for icebreakers. Almost every icebreaker in the world has come from Helsinki. That will also give time for Davie to complete the necessary Infrastructure upgrades not only to finish Imnaryuaq but also to start on the Program icebreakers.

I wouldn’t have imagined this in a million years. I knew something was coming. I was warned that something was coming, but not this. I have almost no words for this.

The federal government is saying that these two with their differences will help complement each other, providing similar roles, but specializing in different tasks. The Polar Max design Is very much a multi-use vessel, and can apparently be customized to a number of different tasks.

This isn’t the only news either. I know for a fact that we still have another announcement coming in the next couple weeks about submarines. There is also like likely to be some movement on some army news, but I don’t know what yet.

I didn’t want to waste the newsletter pumping these when they quite deserve their own place. I don’t know if anything else is coming this weekend but for now I’ve decided to do this and any future news will get mentioned in the newsletter.

I think we’re going to see a slow down for the next couple days. At least I hope so because Noah definitely needs a break!