What's Canada Buying? August 4, 2012

• Big Honkin’ Ships  “Vindicated by revelations this past spring that the Department of National Defence withheld information about the full cost of the F-35 fighter, Parliament’s budgetary watchdog has now turned its attention to the Harper government’s $35-billion national shipbuilding plan.  The government has maintained the national shipbuilding procurement strategy, as the massive plan to overhaul of Canada’s navy and coast guard fleets is called, is moving full steam ahead.  But difficult negotiations with industry, tight budget allocations and schedule delays have been bubbling beneath the surface — and the Parliamentary Budget Office’s involvement threatens to bring them to the surface in a very public way.  Liberal defence critic John McKay said PBO officials had confirmed to him they were studying the shipbuilding plan after he asked them to do so in June 2011.  That request was made before Halifax and Vancouver were chosen to carry out the majority of work and before the government revealed that delivery of the first ships to be produced under the strategy — seven armed Arctic vessels — would be delayed three years.  There are fears that delay will spill over into other shipbuilding projects, affecting plans to have replacements for Canada’s destroyers, frigates and supply ships in place before they are retired ….”
• More on the CF getting together with industry to discuss a new Fixed Wing Search and Rescue plane:  the CF’s planning to visit a couple of plane-making factories – more in the latest bid document amendment here.

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