A scale model of a TKMS HDW Class 212CD submarine is displayed at the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries annual trade show CANSEC in Ottawa on May 27.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Ottawa has chosen Germany’s TKMS to build its new fleet of submarines, buying into a team NATO approach and shying away from strengthening ties with the rival Indo-Pacific bidder.
The choice means Canada will join an existing partnership forged between Germany and Norway to produce submarines for their respective navies, using their unique strengths in their work forces, industry and supply chains.
TKMS faced tough competition with its opponent, South Korea’s Hanwha, which made a big show of sailing its own submarine to Canada’s West Coast and announced a torrent of agreements with Canadian companies to sweeten the industrial-benefits aspect of its bid.
Yet, the German bid, and its much more measured approach, prevailed. TKMS is now expected to deliver up to 12 of its Type 212CD diesel-electric submarines to Canada beginning sometime before 2035.
With them should come a slew of economic benefits.
TKMS’s publicly disclosed teaming agreements and memorandums of understanding, mostly with Canadian companies, totals about 22. Though, that list doesn’t include government-to-government agreements or partnerships that the company says form a significant part of its proposal, but were not made public during the bidding process.
At the end of May, Berlin said the German-Norwegian bid would contribute $86-billion to Canada’s gross domestic product over the life of the deal. It’s also expected to create more than 650,000 job years, a unit of one job that lasts for one year, over the same period.
Now, it’s time to deliver.
To help you picture what’s expected to unfold now that Ottawa has chosen its winner, The Globe and Mail mapped TKMS’s publicly disclosed agreements from the beginning of the bidding process to decision day. Here’s what we found.
Ottawa’s decision to work with TKMS over South Korea’s Hanwha shows, at a political level, that the government remains serious about its commitment to NATO and working closely with Arctic allies such as Norway. Now that a choice has been made, it’s up to TKMS to deliver what it has promised: jobs, infrastructure and meaningful economic benefits that will have a ripple effect across Canada for decades to come.