A fascinating and thought-provoking article which leads one to wonder about plans to replace the Victoria-class and whether the French would ever talk to Canada again about submarine procurement. Read more: https://defence.frontline.online/article/2016/5/5503
David Dunlop, 1 October 2018. The characteristics of modern 21st century submarines are: endurance, stealth, freedom of movement and versatility. The best […]
WE need that 2% GDP on Canada’s Defense Asap!!! Trump Presidency WILL eventually soon enforce this statement for Canada.
10 New modern D.E. Subs for Canada like Germany’s Thyssend Kruup 212 model at 500 M each (only 28 Sailors to operated it)! WHY (please someone tell me here) waste up to 3 Billion dollars on “salvaging” those 4 old, rusted Flawed Victoria Class Subs that will never safeguard our Territorial water’s sovereignty? These German Subs 212/214 Class Subs are the best money can buy…Ideal for our Needs….Period.
Please read text below;
Keith Spicer • Canada’s Arctic claims
PARIS — One’s name was Rubis, her rival’s Trafalgar. The first was a French submarine, the second British. Neither sub class now guards Canada’s Far North sovereignty. Yet some 18 years ago, Ottawa almost decided to buy up to a dozen such nuclear-powered U-boats to defend its long-contested claim over the water and seabed of those vast polar territories in red on your map.
These German Subs 212/214 Class – Diesel-Electric and or French DCNS Barracuda Suffren Class Subs (both have the AIP system) are best money can buy for Canada’s futur. THEY will assume and assure the safeguard of our Territorial Sovereignty, especially our Arctic region.
Canada’s Needs to get the 2% GDP money on is Defense Asap.
2 thoughts on “New Australian Submarines”
WE need that 2% GDP on Canada’s Defense Asap!!! Trump Presidency WILL eventually soon enforce this statement for Canada.
10 New modern D.E. Subs for Canada like Germany’s Thyssend Kruup 212 model at 500 M each (only 28 Sailors to operated it)! WHY (please someone tell me here) waste up to 3 Billion dollars on “salvaging” those 4 old, rusted Flawed Victoria Class Subs that will never safeguard our Territorial water’s sovereignty? These German Subs 212/214 Class Subs are the best money can buy…Ideal for our Needs….Period.
Please read text below;
Keith Spicer • Canada’s Arctic claims
PARIS — One’s name was Rubis, her rival’s Trafalgar. The first was a French submarine, the second British. Neither sub class now guards Canada’s Far North sovereignty. Yet some 18 years ago, Ottawa almost decided to buy up to a dozen such nuclear-powered U-boats to defend its long-contested claim over the water and seabed of those vast polar territories in red on your map.
BY THE OTTAWA CITIZEN SEPTEMBER 10, 2007
PARIS — One’s name was Rubis, her rival’s Trafalgar. The first was a French submarine, the second British. Neither sub class now guards Canada’s Far North sovereignty. Yet some 18 years ago, Ottawa almost decided to buy up to a dozen such nuclear-powered U-boats to defend its long-contested claim over the water and seabed of those vast polar territories in red on your map.
Now Europeans gape as five nations press claims to “our” energy-and-minerals-rich Arctic seabed. They chuckle as a metre-high titanium Russian flag planted on the ocean floor panics our current prime minister into going north as our sovereignty goes south. They marvel at his surface-only Canadian response: a few, years-late coastal patrol ships, modest military and naval bases, and an amateur militia of Inuit “Rangers.”
Again Canada defends its North with bombast, symbols and long-to-happen half-reforms. It abandons effective presence on “its” Arctic seabed where the riches lie. Only under-ice nuclear subs can patrol there: this summer, HMCS Corner Brook, a second-hand diesel-electric submarine, travelled north, but couldn’t go far under the ice.
In recent days, I interviewed two key players in the late 1980s nuclear sub debacle. One Canadian, one French. Both agree that in renouncing nuclear-powered subs Canada missed more than the U-boat. It likely forever missed its chance of exercising the Arctic sovereignty it claims.
My first expert was Perrin Beatty, Brian Mulroney’s defence minister (1986-89). Beatty deplores the “lost opportunity” of the nuclear-powered submarines. “Now we have to play catch-up,” he says. In a 1988 speech outlining his White Paper on defence, Beatty argued that “the events of the past year (the crumbling Soviet Bloc) have served to confirm both the feasibility and the desirability of our building a small fleet of nuclear-propelled submarines … they will — for the first time — permit Canada’s navy to participate in the defence of the Arctic.”
U.S. navy and diplomatic chiefs, he notes, fought giving Canada the U.S. submarine technology. In spite of Mulroney-Reagan coziness, they never accepted Canada’s sovereignty over Arctic waters. And they thought Canadians too primitive to handle nuclear propulsion.
The Tories organized a competition between the French and British designs. But public pressure, featuring scary polls, convinced them that “nuclear” submarines would tag them as warmongers. With an election looming, they dropped the whole project. This delighted our Arctic rivals, especially the U.S. It enchanted Canada’s anti-military “peace community.” But it left Canada’s seabed open to year-round, under-ice patrols only by the U.S. and Russia — plus, in theory, Britain and France.
My second expert, Franois Bujon de l’Estang, was France’s ambassador to Canada (1989-91) at the height of the sub debate, then ambassador to Washington. He notes that in the Rubis-Trafalgar competition, Canada’s navy chose the Rubis in spite of bitter U.K.-U.S. opposition. France offered its technology “without restriction,” while the U.S. (owning the Trafalgar’s technology) would not relent.
After a three-year public debate, Mulroney sank the seabed subs for “budgetary” reasons. “Although lacking a smoking gun,” says Bujon de l’Estang, “I was always convinced that Washington’s pressures weighed heavily in this, and were likely decisive. The truth is, the U.S. didn’t want (and still doesn’t) Canada to be able to protect its own territory, especially the Arctic. (That’s why) they refused to allow transfer of the (U.S.-leased) Trafalgar technology. … With Russia’s pretensions,” he adds, “this is singularly timely … Canada certainly did miss the boat with the Conservative government’s 1990-91 decision.”
A final irony? The incidental alliance between a U.S. determined to stop Canada from exercising its northern sovereignty, and Canada’s left-leaning, anti-nuke nationalists. The latter muddied the debate by harping on “nuclear subs,” as though they were nuclear-armed, not nuclear-powered. In the end, our “nationalists” won the debate … and helped lose it for Canada. Washington, not Ottawa, still controls our Arctic, brazenly sending nuclear-powered subs through an ice-bound Northwest Passage Canada itself can’t use. Or even monitor — the bare minimum for sustaining a sovereignty claim.
Our main rivals now launch major efforts to explore, and later claim, links to the undersea Lomonosov Ridge — a 1,800-kilometre-long key to huge swaths of the Arctic seabed. The U.S. and Russia are sending undersea missions to explore and map the area. They will present their evidence to a United Nations Law of the Sea commission.
How much is sovereignty worth? Is that a question you could even imagine another French expert on sovereignty, Charles de Gaulle, asking? Beatty sums up Canada’s choice by quoting former Canadian vice-admiral Charles Thomas: “You can have as much sovereignty as you’re willing to pay for.”
So how much are we game to pay?
Fooling itself, but not the world, Canada still hopes to defend its vast, contested Arctic with little gestures, loud words and loose change.
Former Citizen editor Keith Spicer now lives and writes in Paris.
© (c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.
D’un Canadien errant.
These German Subs 212/214 Class – Diesel-Electric and or French DCNS Barracuda Suffren Class Subs (both have the AIP system) are best money can buy for Canada’s futur. THEY will assume and assure the safeguard of our Territorial Sovereignty, especially our Arctic region.
Canada’s Needs to get the 2% GDP money on is Defense Asap.