{"id":42678,"date":"2018-03-14T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T09:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=42678"},"modified":"2018-03-13T13:21:16","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T17:21:16","slug":"the-navy-we-need-versus-the-navy-were-willing-to-pay-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/03\/14\/the-navy-we-need-versus-the-navy-were-willing-to-pay-for\/","title":{"rendered":"The navy we need versus the navy we’re willing to pay for"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Campbell<\/a> recounts the ups and downs of the federal government’s plans for the Royal Canadian Navy over the last few decades:<\/p>\n

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A Chilean navy boarding team fast-ropes onto the flight deck of RCN Halifax<\/em>-class frigate HMCS Calgary<\/em> (FFH 335) during multinational training exercise Fuerzas Aliadas PANAMAX<\/em> 2009.
US Navy photo via Wikimedia.<\/p><\/div>\n

One of my old friends, commenting to another equally old friend on social media, said this: \u201cSurely, the PM and his government must see the obvious \u2014 that as the oceans warm and the ice melts the Northwest Passage becomes navigable year round. He\u2019s been sounding off about climate change ad nauseum<\/em> so that would seem to be understood by him. As a teacher he must also know that European colonial powers sought a shortcut between east and west but were deterred by ice. That\u2019s changed, which he acknowledges, and Canada\u2019s claim of the.increasingly ice free Northwest Passage as sovereign territory is under threat. Absent Canada\u2019s willingness, and any capability, to enforce it\u2019s claim, Canada surrenders any legitimate right to ownership of the Northwest Passage and the resources in the territory it abuts. That a maritime nation bordered by three oceans needs a blue-water navy is axiomatic. And once the PM acknowledges that the Northwest Passage is about to become Canada\u2019s Suez Canal he must recognize that it, too, needs to be protected and defended by the Royal Canadian Navy. But the navy can only do that if it has ships and sailors. If Canada doesn\u2019t expend the effort to protect its shores and assert its claims someone else will.\u201d Sound pretty sensible, doesn\u2019t it? Climate change will, very possibly, open the Northwest Passage; it Canada cannot patrol and police those waters then others will exploit them; it\u2019s the Navy\u2019s job to patrol and police our waters \u2026 I have argued that the \u201cconstabulary fleet\u201d that should do that ought not to be in the Navy, but that\u2019s a different issue \u2026 for now.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Way back when ~ I\u2019m working from memory and I\u2019m happy to have these numbers corrected ~ the Royal Canadian Navy said, in a document called \u201cLeadmark,\u201d if my memory serves, that, in addition to infrastructure (headquarters, schools, dockyards, etc) it needed:<\/p>\n