New Arctic Patrol Vessels
The federal government will fund the construction of six to eight new Arctic patrol ships to help reassert Canada's sovereignty over the North, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday.
A few things about this announcement:
a) They've announced this before, they're just milking it, and will probably continue to do so given there are a number of stages to go through yet before they even start building these ships
b) As the previous story noted, the Coast Guard needs its icebreakers replenished or replaced. The boats Harper announced are useless in heavy ice conditions. Hell, we just had an oil tanker arrive with greater ice-breaking ability than these are supposed to have. Without the big icebreakers, these little patrol boats aren't terribly useful.
c) Dave at the The Galloping Beaver, who has some expertise in these matters, posted about this during the May announcement, and pointed out that sovereignty patrols are the responsibility of the Coast Guard or RCMP Maritime units, not the Navy's, and so giving these new ships to the Navy makes little sense, plus in the comments it was noted that since Cabinet telling the Navy to get the ships rather than the Navy requesting them, the odds of them ever actually being built is quite low.
d) About that deepwater port we Iqaluvummiut were promised:
Documents obtained by CBC News indicate the military has evaluated four possible sites to base the vessels, including Iqaluit.
. . .
However, he said Iqaluit wouldn't be the best location because it is nowhere near the Northwest Passage. Canada's military should be centred right in the middle of the Arctic, at Resolute Bay, LeBlanc said.
"Iqaluit is completely on the east coast of Canada and it would take ages to go to the West Coast from Iqaluit," he said.
"In terms of Canadian sovereignty, I think it would be the wrong place."
Bastards!
