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But accusations that the government has sole sourced a military contract even larger than the one at the centre of the F35 fiasco may be more than just sour grapes on the part of those frozen out.

There was genuine shock in Ottawa defence circles when an apparently routine information session on the efforts to build a new warship fleet — Canada’s largest-ever defence procurement project — revealed, without fanfare, that Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax had been awarded the designation as prime contractor on the $26-billion procurement to build up to 15 ships.

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While it is not clear that climate change is occurring, there is no dispute that the polar ice cap has receded, facilitating foreign penetration of the Arctic adjacent to Canada; traffic through that ocean has considerably increased, and now goes well beyond that of the traditional neighbouring countries — Canada, the U.S., Russia, Norway, Denmark and Japan. Although the Russians have gone back to flying to the edge or even within Canadian airspace, disputes over sovereignty in the region are limited to that between Canada and Greenland (Denmark), over Hans Island, and between Canada and the U.S. over rights to 6,000 square miles of seabed in the Beaufort Sea, which is bordered by Alaska, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

There is also, in the $36.6-billion National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy that was first outlined generally by the government in 2011 but hasn’t visibly moved since then, a further generation of surface ships for more temperate waters, and a heavy icebreaker for the Coast Guard, to be named after prime minister John Diefenbaker, in recognition of his emphasis on the Arctic and his “roads to resources” program of the late Fifties. The additional ships, which will be produced over 20 to 30 years, include 15 unclassified “surface combatants,” each about 20% larger than the very successful 12 Halifax-class frigates of 1992-1996. Three support ships and four other Coast Guard vessels are also in the program. The first of the new Arctic patrol boats will be named after Admiral Harry DeWolf, the swashbuckling Nova Scotian Second World War commander of the destroyer Haida.