Canada's Navy submarines are so old we can't find spare parts
Liberals mishandle military procurement, every time they are involved. Now the Navy is running out of parts for their rust bucket submarines.
The Liberals have a long history of screwing the military while wasting money to do it. There was the Sea King helicopter fiasco. Even as the aircraft were falling out of the sky, the Liberals cancelled the contact to replace them, paying penalties to do it. Then there was the recent procurement of 25 retired F-18s from Australia to prop up Canada’s aging CF-18 fleet. The formerly decommissioned Aussie jets will cost $500 million to keep them in the air for 10 more years.
But perhaps the worst example of Liberals throwing good money after bad is the Victoria class submarines — four used subs bought from the UK by the Liberals two decades ago that have been a bottomless money pit ever since.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that in 2019, the decrepit subs spent no time at sea. But the situation around the rust bucket British submarines is even worse than first reported. Blacklock's Reporter broke the news yesterday:
“Parliament in 1995 voted $750 million to buy the four used submarines from the U.K. HMCS Chicoutimi subsequently caught fire, killing a crewman. The fire “placed the boat out of service for nine years,” wrote auditors.
Another sub, HMCS Corner Brook knocked a two-metre hole in its bow when it ran aground on maneuvers off the British Columbia coast in 2011. The accident “removed it from service for seven years,” said the report.
Of the remaining subs, HMCS Victoria “spent zero days at sea” last year with maintenance bills of $48.4 million since 2018. HMCS Windsor “spent zero days at sea” with two-year maintenance bills of $37 million.”
The audit mentioned by Blacklock's is called the Evaluation of Ready Naval Forces Audit and is a damning indictment of the Liberals’ choice of those used piles of scrap steel so many years ago and how today’s Liberals are continuing their party’s anti-military legacy by wasting valuable resources on subs that should be sent to the car crusher and not to Naval bases.
The audit notes “ongoing refit issues with the submarines”, and “serviceability issues related to two crashes” and that “The navy has had sufficient national procurement funds to meet spare part demands, however, the obsolescence of certain ship and submarine systems has made it difficult to obtain some parts.”
The sub fleet is so old the Navy could not find parts and all but one of the subs will spend 2020 in dry dock.
Every time the Liberals are in power, without fail, our military falls into a decade of darkness. Our soldiers are asking for more than the Liberals are willing to give while the world and every social justice cause is asking for just the right amount.
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