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The federal government will decide in the fall whether resupplying Canada’s navy or Arctic sovereignty is more important.

The Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard each has major shipbuilding projects scheduled to be ready for construction at the same time around 2015.

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[np_storybar title=”Matt Gurney: The Navy’s long, winding road to new supply ships” link=”http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/06/09/matt-gurney-the-navys-long-winding-road-to-new-supply-ships/”]

After years and millions of dollars spent creating, reviewing and then disgarding potential designs for new Royal Canadian Navy supply ships, it was recently announced that Canada will just buy a German design and build that.

This is good news. But it took far too long to get here.

Canada’s existing naval supply vessels are elderly. The younger of the two Protecteur-class ships in service with the Navy was commissioned in 1970 — 43 years ago. They have been scheduled for retirement and replacement for years, but budgetary pressures and difficulty coming up with a new design have repeatedly delayed the program, which was originally announced in 2004.