In 2020, Canada chartered a foreign icebreaker for Arctic search and rescue while promoting a multi-billion dollar domestic icebreaker program as evidence of sovereignty. Both things were true simultaneously. That is the central tension in Canadian shipbuilding policy.
Industry Profiles
Canada's National Shipbuilding Strategy is worth approximately CAD 60 billion and represents around 0.1 percent of GDP. That contrast is the starting point for understanding what Canadian shipbuilding actually is and is not.
Industry Profiles
Seaspan won a fixed price contract to build three fisheries science vessels, delivered them, and lost significant money in the process. That outcome is not a scandal or an anomaly. It is a precise illustration of how shipbuilding finance actually works in Canada.
