Seaspan Shipyards To Design 16 Multi-Purpose Vessels For CCG Fleet
An important announcement is made by The Liberal government in Vancouver for renewing Canada’s Coast Guard fleet. The announcement covered the critical role played by the Coast Guard on Canada’s three oceans for keeping our waters safe, secure and open, and to promote and protect our marine habitat.
As part of the Government’s recapitalization plan, 16 Multi-Purpose Vessels will be designed by Seaspan Shipyards for the Coast Guard. This announcement represents an important vote of confidence in Seaspan as a centre of shipbuilding excellence and a considerable relief to those within our workforce who, until today, have not had clarity into their future.
Seaspan appreciates the efforts of all those responsible for today’s announcement about the future work we have been expecting, and what we have invested heavily for, since being selected in 2011 through a competitive, fair, open and transparent procurement process as one of two shipyards to build large vessels for the Canadian Coast Guard and Navy for the next 30 years.
Today the Government announced to run a process to select a third Canadian shipyard under NSS which was an unexpected and disappointing development.
Seaspan believes that a third shipyard building large vessels in Canada will return us to the boom and bust cycles that defined previous federal shipbuilding programs, and undermines the founding principles of the NSS that identified two shipyards as Canada’s strategic partners and centres of excellence for federal shipbuilding – a large combat vessel shipyard on the East Coast and Seaspan as Canada’s large non-combat vessel shipyard on the West Coast.
Discussions will be made with Ottawa, on an urgent basis, the financial and workforce implications to our business of the federal government’s decision. Based on the outcome of those discussions, outcome will be decided that whether today’s announcement is good for shipbuilding in BC and for our supply chain across the country.
Reference: seaspan.com
