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The department is skeptical of the consortium’s claims, which is fair enough. But it hardly has a sterling track record itself. Virtually every other part of the Strategy is in trouble. Neither of the two supply ships commissioned under the Joint Support Ship Project, to be built by Vancouver-based Seaspan, has even begun construction, in part because the shipyard is still wrestling with the four fisheries patrol vessels it is supposed to deliver to the Coast Guard.

A navy is not much use without supply ships, so as a stopgap the government asked Quebec’s Davie Shipyard to refit a commercial vessel for the purpose. That having been accomplished, the company wants to be given the contract for another, with the increasingly vocal support of Quebec’s political class.

At a rally last week, the premier, Philippe Couillard, demanded that Davie be given a larger share of federal shipbuilding work. “We’re asking for equality,” he said. “We are asking for justice. We’re not asking for charity, we’re just asking for our fair share.” But all of the work on the National Shipbuilding Strategy was contracted to the two coastal yards (at the time, Davie was essentially bankrupt.) So either some of that work would have to be taken away from them and given to Quebec — good luck with that — or the federal government would have to come up with a reason to build still more ships.

Photo by Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press

So far the feds appear to be holding firm. “We cannot artificially create a need that does not exist,” federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau was heard to explain the other day. But of course they can, and do. If the federal government were not in the business of artificially creating procurement needs, it would not insist on building all new ships, all in Canada, rather than either refitting existing ships, as in the Davie example, or buying or even renting them from abroad: all demonstrably cheaper alternatives, and quicker, too.