Article content

The Royal Canadian Navy considered giving a destroyer and supply ship to another nation instead of scrapping them, but had to nix the idea when it realized how costly it would be to remove hazardous materials from the vessels.

HMCS Protecteur and HMCS Algonquin, both decommissioned in 2015, were considered for donation, according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen. But to move ahead with that plan would have required that the government spend more than $10 million on each vessel to remove all polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Navy can't even give away two old ships because it would cost too much to remove hazardous materials Back to video

Instead of spending the $20 million, the decision was made to send the vessels to the scrap heap.

Public Services and Procurement Canada has just put out a new request for bids for the disposal of the former HMCS Preserver, a supply ship, and the former CFAV Quest, a research ship used by the Department of National Defence. Those bids are required by April 26.