by Michael Byers, Special to the Globe and Mail, March 27, 2012
A rugged little ship adorns the back of the new $50 bill that the Bank of Canada began circulating Monday. But, in an ironic twist of fate, the red and white CCGS Amundsen no longer sails the Arctic seas.
The 98-metre icebreaker was built in 1979 and originally named the CCGS Sir John Franklin. With 18,000 horsepower and a thick double hull, she could push steadily through one metre-thick sea ice and ram her way through much thicker ice ridges.
In 2003, the ship was retrofitted for scientific research with high-tech laboratories, a dynamic positioning system, a multi-beam sonar for seabed mapping and a moon pool for accessing the ocean through the bottom of the hull.
In recognition that science is international, she was renamed after the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who, in 1906, became the first explorer to sail through the Northwest Passage.
Today, however, the Amundsen is tied to a wharf in Trois-Rivières, with cracks in four of her six engines – cracks symptomatic of decades of underfunding for Canada’s Coast Guard icebreaker fleet.
Breaking ice is hard on ships, not least because ramming through ridges requires that engines move rapidly between forward and reverse. For this reason, icebreakers are usually expected to last only 30 years.
The youngest ship in Canada’s icebreaking fleet is the 25-year-old Henry Larsen. Next in line is the 29-year-old Terry Fox. The Amundsen’s two sister ships, the Des Groseilliers and Pierre Radisson, are 30 and 34 years old, respectively.
The fleet’s flagship, the Louis S. St-Laurent, is 43. Last summer, she had to be escorted out of the Arctic Ocean by a U.S. icebreaker after her main propeller broke.
Yet, these aging ships provide a range of essential services, from breaking paths for commercial vessels to maintaining navigation aids, resupplying meteorological stations and supporting scientific research. They also serve as highly mobile platforms for other government agencies such as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the RCMP.
In 2005, then-opposition leader Stephen Harper promised to build three new heavy icebreakers. Two years later, as Prime Minister, he changed his mind and announced that six to eight ice-strengthened Arctic offshore patrol ships would be constructed, instead, and assigned to the navy rather than the Coast Guard.
The decision was based on concerns – widespread at the time – that Canadian Arctic sovereignty was under threat from other countries. Russian scientists had just planted a titanium flag on the seabed at the North Pole, and the media were playing up the risk of a new Cold War.
Now, however, the Arctic countries are co-operating closely. Last year, Russia and Norway resolved the largest remaining Arctic sovereignty dispute with a boundary treaty in the Barents Sea.
Russia has led the negotiation of an Arctic-wide search-and-rescue treaty, promoted the use of the Northern Sea Route along its coast by foreign cargo vessels, and reaffirmed that the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is the appropriate mechanism for determining the extent of seabed rights in the Central Arctic Ocean.
Mr. Harper took note of these changes. In January of 2010, according to the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, he told NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen that “Canada has a good working relationship with Russia” and “there is no likelihood of Arctic states going to war.”
The navy has responded to the reduced threat level by scaling back the planned size and speed of the Arctic offshore patrol ships. The vessels will now be capable of just 17 knots, compared with the 29 knots of Canada’s two-decade-old frigates. Their capabilities will also be limited by the decision to build them as ice-strengthened rather than icebreaking vessels. Indeed, the hulls won’t be strong enough to allow Arctic operations between November and July
Part-time “slushbreakers” will never be able to replace purpose-built icebreakers. In an increasingly busy Arctic, Canada needs ships that can go anywhere, any time, and fulfill all of the federal government’s responsibilities in the region.
For five years, the government has talked about replacing the Louis S. St. Laurent with a new heavy icebreaker named the Diefenbaker, but, so far, no contract has been signed. And because the Arctic sea ice is thinning and receding, the Diefenbaker, as currently planned, will be more powerful and expensive than necessary. Two or three medium icebreakers could be built for the same cost, and provide more coverage and flexibility.
Fortunately, as Liberal Senator Colin Kenny has pointed out, we still have time to get things right. Plans for the Arctic offshore patrol ships and the Diefenbaker should be set aside, and mid-sized multi-purpose Coast Guard icebreakers built instead.
Most of Canada’s current icebreakers – including the plucky little Amundsen – won’t last as long as our new $50 bills.
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by Mahmud Naqi, Steven Staples
Published in Embassy online. March 21, 2012.
In times past, many in the military would have taken only a passing interest in an NDP leadership race.
But now, with the party second only to the Conservatives in Parliament, Canada’s military brass and defence lobby will be paying much closer attention to who will be the new leader of Canada’s official Opposition.
The Canadian government will face vital questions in the years to come about what to do with the enormous military machine that has been built in the decade since 9/11.
Should we continue buying the ships, aircraft, and combat vehicles set out in the four-year-old Canada First Defence Strategy? When will we deploy our military forces or keep them at home? And how much should we spend on national defence?
How will the NDP answer these questions?
Many defence watchers hope the NDP will be much clearer on national defence than it has been in the past.
For instance, the NDP opposed the invasion of Iraq and wanted troops withdrawn from Afghanistan, but voted twice in favour of the air war over Libya.
In the last federal election, the NDP pledged to review the F-35 stealth fighter program, but endorsed the Conservatives’ planned military spending increases that would pay for the F-35s and other combat-oriented equipment.
s the official Opposition, the NDP must have a comprehensive policy framework to address issues as they emerge. The next leader will play an important role in shaping the party’s new vision for the military. And there is a lot of work to be done.
What can we learn from the public statements of the NDP leadership candidates and the leadership debates?
Unfortunately, the leadership campaign has not held substantive discussions on foreign policy, despite the fact that questions from members touch on military issues frequently.
Five candidates have released statements on defence and foreign policy, and in general they agree that Canada’s military should re-focus on protecting Canadian sovereignty and on peacekeeping.
They also suggest that we should build on our expertise in providing relief and search and rescue efforts– as well as buying equipment suited for these tasks.
Many candidates have described the government’s plans to buy the F-35 stealth fighters as a misplaced priority; Peggy Nash, for example, contrasted the cost of the planes with the need to fund social programs such as health care.
But only Thomas Mulcair has emphasized the need to cancel plans to purchase the F-35 stealth fighters, and made it a clear, central part of his foreign policy statement.
Other than Paul Dewar, none of the candidates has clearly stated when Canada should intervene militarily in another country. Dewar, who has served as the party’s foreign affairs critic for many years, has been upfront in his support of peacekeeping missions abroad with United Nations endorsement.
He also supports the notion of a “responsibility to protect” which justified the war in Libya, a mission that was controversial among many NDP supporters. But Paul Dewar has come out as categorically opposed to war with Iran.
On defence spending, the candidates are quiet, despite the fact that this is the top question facing the federal government as it confronts a budget deficit and tough competition for scarce resources.
Military spending has nearly doubled in real terms since 9/11, and it consumes one out of four dollars the government spends on federal departments and agencies.
As the final convention day draws nearer, one pivotal question is taking shape: whether the new leader should move the party to the right, or not.
Ironically, the NDP’s policy does not differ dramatically from that of the Liberals on defence procurement decisions (like the F-35s), from the Conservatives on military spending, or from any party other than the Greens on the Libya mission.
Canadians will expect that, if the NDP truly is a “government in waiting,” the new leader will be prepared to address these crucial questions about the role of Canada’s military.
The answers will need to clearly articulate a defence policy that provides a real alternative to the government’s militaristic trend.
The next NDP leader must show that he or she is prepared to deal with the tough issues of managing the military’s rapacious financial appetite and dealing with the country’s powerful defence lobby, while preparing Canada’s military to successfully accomplish the roles and missions that Canadians want it to fulfill.
Steven Staples is the president of the Rideau Institute, an Ottawa-based research group that focuses on foreign and defence policy. Mahmud Naqi is an MA candidate at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
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What cuts to the defence department will look like remains to be seen, but the Rideau Institute is advocating for reduced defence spending that would eventually return to pre-9/11 levels, reports Embassy newspaper this week.
The institute, a non-profit that does independent research, advocacy and consulting on international issues, wrote in its submission that after 9/11, Canada joined other countries in military operations and “embarked on a long list of equipment and weapons acquisition or modernization programs.”
“A decade later, the great threats to Canadians’ security are not military, but economic…governments are now preoccupied with addressing the global financial crisis and ensuring an economic recovery for their citizens.”
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“If the U.S. is looking at its military strategy, wouldn’t this be a good time for Canada to do the same thing?” Steven Staples, President of the Rideau Institute, told Embassy newspaper this week.
Associate Editor Carl Meyer writes that U.S. President Barack Obama said he was “turning the page on a decade of war” as he revealed a new U.S. defence document, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities For 21st Century Defense, on Jan. 5, making it clear that U.S.-led interventionism was being downplayed in favour of a more conventional posture that will lean heavily on allies.
Read more: http://www.embassymag.ca/page/view/military-01-11-2012
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Reacting to news that Thetford Mines, Que.-based LAB Chrysotile filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, Rideau Institute board member and senior advisor Kathleen Ruff told the Globe and Mail that, “The industry is totally bankrupt, but it continues to lobby to get public funds to save itself.”
Read more: Canada’s asbestos industry on its last legs, by Bertrand Marotte. Globe and Mail, January 4, 2012.
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