The Royal Canadian Navy hosts the Republic of Korea Navy KSS-III submarine, known as Dosan Ahn Chang-ho, and the ROKS Daejeon frigate during a welcome ceremony at CFB Esquimalt in Esquimalt, B.C., in May.Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press
The federal government has narrowed its list of West Coast locations for a specialized maintenance hub to service Canada’s future fleet of multi-billion-dollar submarines.
The sites on Vancouver Island – along with previously reported locations in the Halifax area – are under consideration to serve as the home ports and primary maintenance facilities for a fleet of up to six submarines on each of the East and West coasts.
Specialized facilities are a crucial requirement for Canada’s procurement of a fleet of new submarines – a major plank in the government’s push to hit NATO spending targets as allies race to adjust to a changing global security environment.
Both South Korea’s Hanwha and Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems have promised thousands of new jobs and extensive local economic spinoff benefits through their bids for the 12-vessel submarine contract. The government said on Monday that it expects to announce its preferred choice of submarine designs by the end of the month.
But the need for new skilled labourers to run these maintenance facilities will strain a domestic defence sector already experiencing an acute shortage.
Submarine facility plans in Halifax spark friction over shipyard labour pool
Because specialized industrial trades like marine pipe-fitters, hull fabricators and high-tech systems engineers cannot be easily replaced, the upcoming submarine staffing needs are creating friction with existing surface programs.
British Columbia Premier David Eby said in March that the province’s shallow pool of skilled tradespeople represents a “severe constraint” for upcoming maritime programs. Nationally, the domestic marine industry faces a projected deficit of more than 8,000 workers by the end of the decade. Training institutions are currently meeting less than half of that demand, according to a major new industry report.
The West Coast maintenance facility location options, mapped in a federal government document reviewed by The Globe and Mail, include a parcel of land in West Colwood on the western side of Esquimalt Harbour, as well as the Pacific Breakwater Repair Facility site located directly within Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt.
The fleet of 12 submarines is expected to cost at least $60-billion to $80-billion to build. But constructing the specialized coastal facilities and executing multi-decade maintenance contracts will push the total lifecycle cost of the fleet well above $100-billion over the coming decades.
In an e-mailed response to a list of detailed questions, the federal government played down the regional labour constraints, saying the National Shipbuilding Strategy’s human resources mechanisms have “expanded and matured” to support local industry in meeting labour demand.
A spokesperson for the Public Services and Procurement Canada department also pointed to existing international frameworks, such as the trilateral Icebreaker Collaboration Effort that sees Ottawa collaborate with Finland and the United States on joint work force development initiatives.
On the East Coast, Irving Shipbuilding is warning that an identical maintenance facility planned for the Halifax area – which it understands will be “government-owned, privately operated” – risks cannibalizing the regional trades pool delivering 15 new River-class destroyers for the Royal Canadian Navy.
To support a fleet of six submarines, each of the proposed facilities is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build – and would require between 450 and 650 permanent personnel, according to industry estimates. That’s not including public service and contracted workers.
The choice of a facility owned by Ottawa but contracting out operations – rather than relying on the Royal Canadian Navy’s historic role in handling deep fleet maintenance in-house – could be driven by a severe, looming time constraint.
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Jeffrey Collins, director of the Palmer Canadian Leadership Institute in Prince Edward Island and a former defence policy analyst with the Department of National Defence, said the decommissioning of Canada’s legacy Victoria-class submarines in 2036 – the same year the 12 new submarines will be delivered – is forcing the government’s hand.
“That’s less than 10 years to start having in place the type of support infrastructure that’s equivalent to sustaining and supporting human-crewed spacecraft in terms of just the technical complexity,” Dr. Collins said in an interview. The hybrid model is common in peer nations such as Australia and might be the fastest way for Ottawa to move under immense time pressure, he said.
Regardless of how the facilities are owned or operated, the strain on the specialized work force remains an unavoidable hurdle.
“Canada’s acquiring a dozen submarines and they’re going to need a lot of people to sustain them,” Dr. Collins said. “Whether it’s a government-owned, contractor-operator model or a complete private sector equivalent, that’s going to be a pressure already.”