HMCS Bonaventure with four of her Vampire jet fighters - nothing says "Excuse Me!" like sending in the fleet. At one time Canada could do this but not anymore. You see decades ago we sold our aircraft carrier for scrap and never replaced it.
HMCS MAGNIFICENT the" Maggie" At one time Canada actually had two carriers but for decades now we have had none. Why? We have three times the population.
Yes we even had Cruisers at one time like the HMCS Ontario. It is amazing how much respect you get when your cruisers and a couple of aircraft carriers with a squadron of destroyers come out of the mist with a bone in their teeth and their guns trained on you. Oh and you know a couple of the neighborhood kids on the crew and those boys can get the job done. And your daughter is the Weapons Officer and she has a mean streak in her and you know she will get the job done too. As a tourist you know that the Canadian fleet is available to come to your aid if things get ugly. Not a consular pencil necked geeky weasel in a striped suit and a briefcase with an earring in his ear. No sir you look out your jailhouse window and there is the Canadian fleet with the maple leaf flowing in the breeze and troops from the PPCLI and a couple of Bosun Boarding Parties being unloaded by landing craft as fighter aircraft take off to do a straffing run at the local military base. In half an hour you are safe and sound and are happy you paid a few extra bucks every year on your taxes so that Canada could have a real navy again.
At the end of WW2 Canada with one of the largest coast lines in the world had a powerful navy the third largest in the world a great accomplishment for a small population of just over 11 million. We had over 300 warships and we were a force to be reckoned with. We had the best sailors in the world. Do yourself a favor and research HMCS HAIDA. At that time our Navy was called the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and we had a navy to be proud of. "Sending out the Fleet" meant something back then as we could send out an aircraft carrier, supply ships a squadron of destroyers and we specialized in anti submarine warfare keeping the rooskie subs on their toes for decades and participating in major peacekeeping missions such as Suez and combat missions such as Korea.
HMCS YUKON
But over the decades -since WW2, the Navy was a sitting target for budget cuts and anti military special interest groups. Ships are capital projects and are expensive to build and maintain. An average Navy ship will last about three or four decades and so fleets need a steady source of new ships or their numbers will run down. As a guide Canada would need one new ship per year entering service to maintain a reasonable sized fleet. Now when is the last time a new navy ship was commissioned? There is the problem.
First, we cut the number of hulls in the navy -then we cut out the carrier in our case just after an expensive refit which would have allowed it to serve for another 20 years or so. Then we cut the number of hulls again down to just 12 general purpose frigates. Each time we cut we attempted to make the remaining ships do more things. We now fly huge antique helicopters off our frigates and they are older than everyone on the ship requiring many hours of maintenance for each flight hour.
When you send your Navy to sea you need to supply then with food and fuel. You need something called a supply ship which is essentially a tanker and floating warehouse. Our tankers are over 35 years old and were scheduled for replacement. And now I see that a that our Conservative govt. cancelled the project claiming it was too expensive. This is crap. This is unacceptable. They also cancelled 12 coast guard patrol ships. But it gets worse. There are at least four ships of our tiny fleet with NO CREWS because of the war effort in Afghanistan and the fact that our Navy is not being maintained. Now we learn the Navy was ordered to mothball half of it's Kingston class patrol vessels because they have no crews and no funds to sail them.
So not being the type of person to let the water flow under the bridge without comment - I decided to fight back. I welcome your ideas and participation. We now have fewer sailor's sea going billets in the entire Canadian Navy than on just ONE USN carrier. Enough is enough. We need to do something to save our navy. We have garage sale submarines bought for a dollar that nobody wanted and that can't go to sea, ships that can't afford fuel and don't have full crews, sailors being diverted to Afghanistan, maintenance and procurement budgets being spent on Afghanistan and a government that has decided to sacrifice the Navy in order to hide the cost of the Afghanistan war.
Our objective is - Four new supply ships for the navy, three new carriers, 24 new frigates and ten new destroyers, two cruisers and 10 new nuclear powered subs. This will take a few years to build but we can start today if we wish. Go big or go home. We have stayed home too long.
We have a population of over 33 million unlike the 11 million of WW2. We can do it and we can end up with a powerful navy and a healthy ship building industry with world class jobs in engineering and fabrication too. And we can start today. And we can all help. Write your MP today!
Right now we have over a million unemployed in Canada who want to work. They are sitting on their bums right now worrying about paying this month's rent. They want to work. They do great work. We have idle steel foundries and idle auto workers. Is there a better time to fire up our shipyards again? All we need is the political will and and some leadership and we can solve this problem. Starting immediately. We can put the job openings in tomorrows paper. We can start clearing land for ship construction by the end of the week. And none of this foolishness about having one French speaking yard and one English speaking yard and one west coast yard. Lets stop being politically correct and start building high quality naval warships not low quality politically correct vessels which are unarmed and which don't offend any special interest group. Workers from all over the country can come to the building yards instead of bringing the building yards to them. Aduhhhhh. Check it out with other shipbuilding nations -that is how it is done not the Canadian way where you try and keep every special interest group happy and no ships come out the other end or the ones that are produced are ten times the cost of an efficient building yard.
Somebody needs to take responsibility when a mess occurs. But here in Canada we tend to play CYA (cover your ass) and blame somebody - anybody else. In fact there are two elected people and two appointed senior officers who must take responsibility for the destruction of our Navy -Peter McKay the Minister of Defense and Stephen Harper the Prime Minister. Both men have failed miserably to maintain our Navy. And lets not forget the two ex Army officers who served as Chiefs of Defense Staff the highest military ranks in our Forces retired General Rick Hillier and the present CDS General Walt Natynczyk. These leaders failed to support our Navy and instead diverted resources to Afghanistan. Afghanistan has been a bottomless pit for approximately 50 billion dollars of Canadian taxpayer's money and casualties without any gain over eight years. Another mess from the same group of underachievers.
In summary my opinion is that Canada needs a much stronger Navy and the key people who are responsible for maintaining it have failed to do so. If you share these opinions and wish to support a stronger Navy please contact your Member of Parliament and here is a contact list. If you are happy with not having a navy that can defend Canadian interests including our coastlines then do nothing.
Update May 14th 2010 Well the proverbial shit hit the fan and the geniuses responsible for this fiasco decided to retreat, backtrack and cancel the mothballing. They all need to be fired. But not the Admiral who gave the orders because clearly he is the only one in the group with the guts to say "enough!" He should be promoted.
Lets ask some simple questions to judge just how much support has been going to the Navy under this government and under the last two Chief of Defense Staff officers (Hillier and Natynczyk) :
1. How many filled sea going positions where there when General Hillier took over?
2 How many filled sea going positions are there today with General Natynczyk?
3. How many operational warships did we have when General Hillier took over.
4. How many operational warships do we have today with General Natynczyk? ?
5. How many new naval ships have had their keels laid and construction started since General Hillier took over until today with General Natynczyk? ?
These "simple questions" will tell you the truth about what has happened to our Navy in the last few years and how miserably our CDS, Minister of Defense and Prime Minister have failed the Navy and Canada. Losers! They have also fumbled badly in Afghanistan squandering our brave troops, destroying all our equipment and wasting 50 billion dollars with no improvement in the 8 year war. Losers in charge and we all pay the price. Don't get me wrong - they all clean up nicely and all have redeeming personalities its just that each of them have not been successful in their jobs.
Oh oh!. It just got worse. Here are a few qoutes from our CDS General Walt Natynczyk:
“It’s my job to make sure that my minister’s not surprised,” Natynczyk said.
“If the minister is uncomfortable with the kind of intent then I have to adjust resources to ensure that we have achieved the minister’s intent.”
That means that the budget shortfall that prompted the navy’s decision hasn’t gone away and money will instead have to be found with the army or air force, both of which are stuck in Afghanistan for the next 18 months.
“We have to look at Canadian Forces allocations across the (force) and the Department of National Defence and (see) what can we do to address the number of ships that are ready to sail,” Natynczyk said. “It’s beyond the navy.”
These are all inane statements. First of all the job of the Chief of Defense Staff is NOT to keep the Minister sanquine. The Minister needs to know when he has dropped the ball. The CDF is there to lobby the Minister on behalf of the Forces, to maintain and protect them and to get the job done and that includes getting sufficient resources for the Navy to operate and the necessary equipment to the army to minimize casualties and win the war. Given that the Minister is Peter McKay it might even mean raising the man's blood pressure the odd time with the hope that his brain might begin to engage.
And as far as ..."addressing the number of ships that are ready to sail..." what in the hell is the man talking about? Does he mean he can forget about the ships that don't have a crew or spare parts or have been sitting alongside because they have no fuel or because they have been cannibalized so that other ships can go to sea? He appears to be like an old tank with one track off spinning around in circles and firing blanks. So to speak.
Double drat another ridiculous qoute from our Chief of Defense staff who clearly now is in traditional Canadian CYA mode:
"We have not stood down a single ship" This is pure bullshit. And it is technically correct because the CDS and Minister of Defence and PM Harper have effectively stood down several ships not a single ship in their mis management of the Forces and the Navy. Admiral McFadden's orders to shut down the ships were a reality call and should have been a wakeup call to Natynczyk, Mckay and Harper. It is surprising the press reports I have reviewed have not seemed to understand what happened here. The Commander of the Navy took a stand and drew a line in the sand. He could have done nothing and wimped out but that's not the Canadian Navy way. Bravo Zulu Admiral McFadden.
It is very clear now that there needs to be a house cleaning at the CDS, Minister and PM levels. These boys have screwed up too many times. This is NOT Canada's "A" team. We are all paying the price; 50 billion bucks with no benefits, the destruction of most of the Army's equipment and no money to replace it, the reduction of the Navy to a memory, no new naval hulls laid down in over a decade, no crews or spares for existing ships, casualties to the best troops in the world for reasons that only a minority in the country support, the first war that Canada has ever lost in our history thanks to poor leadership, bad strategy and unsuccessful tactics.
Enough of my opinions now lets hear yours. The following survey offers several options for resizing our navy. Which one do you think is best?
Free Website Poll
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MARCOM Canadian Navy Wikipedia entry
Canadian Navy of Yesterday and Today
Chronicle Herald article on Navy staffing shortage East Coast
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