Sunnyways Sunnyways:
There are obvious arguments for making ships here but foreigners are easier to deal with when the inevitable cost overruns rear their ugly heads. In no time at all, your friendly local oligarch will start organizing everybody against Canadian job cuts and politicians absolutely hate going down that road. Of course, we’ve got a chronic problem with military procurement in Canada. One of the first stories I noticed when I arrived was the debate over those helicopters Mulroney wanted to buy. It should never have been politicized by Chrétien like that.
While I didn't like the way it was politicized either, the EH-101s were designed for a job that no longer really existed in 1993 (hunting Soviet subs) and we far more than the Navy needed on the Halifax frigates. The problem was that it took a decade to procure something else, and then another 15 years to get them in service.
Cancelling the EH-101 was an okay decision, but we should have bought off the shelf helicopters right away instead of the 25 years it took to replace the Sea Kings.
I agree that ship construction should be outsourced to foreign shipyards with more experience than we have. South Korea just built an amazing AOR for New Zealand that was built faster and cheaper than the 2 AORs we're currently building.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMNZS_AotearoaIf we had gone that way instead of the standard pork barrel politics the Conservatives and Liberals engage in, we probably could have had 3 or even 4 AORs instead of just 2. Same goes for our new surface combatants - getting built in a foreign yard (wherever the UK and Australia are building theirs) would almost certainly reduce costs and maybe even allow us to have another hull or two.
But both parties want the votes from people in the Maritimes, so they shoveled this pork their way instead of doing what made financial sense.
CKA Uber 
