Canada's Submarine Fleet Finally Firing on More Than One Cylinder

Before Canada bought a second-hand sub fleet from the UK, the Brits had tried to fob them off on Pakistan, Portugal, and Chile, to no avail.

But along comes Johnny Canuck with stars in his eyes and a hard-on for submarines. Yessiree, when you’ve got all this coastline you definitely need a sub fleet! Nobody seems sure why, but apparently it’s got something to do with Putin.

The UK subs were designed in the seventies, built in the eighties, commissioned in 1990, and put into storage four years later. The official reason was that the Cold War was over and they didn’t need them anymore. The real reason was that they were crap. Anyone who ever owned a car or motorcycle built in Britain in the ’80′s wouldn’t expect their submarines to be any better.

But buy them we did. There ensued fifteen plus years of refitting, rebuilding, repairing, renovating, renovating the repairs, rebuilding the renovations, refitting the refits, and general dinking around, to the tune of billions of dollars. And for good reason I might add; unlike your forty year old car or motorcycle, when a submarine conks out, you can’t just thumb a ride to the nearest town.

But you can breathe easy, taxpayers of Canada! Finally, some good news on the submarine file;

In an interview with The Canadian Press, Royal Canadian Navy commander Vice-Admiral Ron Lloyd said the diesel-powered submarines — HMCS Chicoutimi, Victoria, Corner Brook, and Windsor – have finally turned a corner.

Lloyd specifically pointed to HMCS Chicoutimi’s having recently spent 197 days in the Pacific and Asia even as HMCS Windsor was patrolling the Mediterranean with NATO as proof the submarines are living up to their potential.

The fact we had two boats concurrently deployed, if that doesn’t speak to the success of the program, I don’t know what does. (National Post, Jan, 2019)

Isn’t that great news! After almost twenty years and billions of dollars spent, our submarine program is a proven success because the Royal Canadian Navy can put two submarines to sea at the same time…  

Putin won’t be messing with us now!