Article content continued

“DND cautioned against setting a hard production date to work towards, noting the challenges this approach caused on AOPS,” the report noted. DND officials warned that committing to a specific time to start cutting steel on the warships “will add additional risk.”

The AOPS were announced in 2007 by then prime minister Stephen Harper and were supposed to be in the water by 2013. But construction didn’t start until 2015. The first ship was launched on Sept. 15 and won’t be operational until 2019.

Three consortiums have submitted bids for the surface combatant program and those are still being evaluated. The project will see 15 warships buiilt by Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax. A winning bid is expected to be selected sometime this year.

The ships will form the backbone of the future Royal Canadian Navy.

Scott Leslie, director general of large combat ship construction at Public Services and Procurement Canada, said that a more precise construction date can’t be provided now because a winning design has yet to be selected.

“There are a lot of variables around it, one of the main ones being which design is chosen and how much work is required to get that design evolved and buildable at Irving Shipyards,” Leslie explained.

Photo by Andrew Vaughan/CP

Irving is worried about the gap after building of the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships but before construction of the surface combatants. If the two projects are not aligned, workers could face layoffs and Irving is worried it will lose skilled personnel.