At a GlanceReport 2—National Shipbuilding Strategy
Why we did this audit
- Timely renewal of the navy’s and the coast guard’s fleets is needed to replace aging ships and to introduce new capabilities to deliver essential services.
- It is important that the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard fleets are reliable and can maintain their capabilities so they can fulfill their mandates. Otherwise this could put at risk Canada’s ability to perform critical operations.
Our findings
- The federal fleet renewal experienced many delays in design and construction.
- Key decisions improved the prospects for timely fleet renewal, but there is little room for further delay.
- The government had taken steps to extend the lives of its aging vessels and acquire interim capabilities to continue delivering essential services, but progress was delayed.
Key facts and figures
- The National Shipbuilding Strategy calls for building 9 types of large vessels for the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard.
- Only 2 of the 4 ships scheduled at the start of the audit period to be delivered by January 2020 were delivered. The two other ships were delivered later in 2020.
- Some vessels had already been retired before being replaced under the strategy.
Our recommendations
- The Canadian Coast Guard, National Defence, and Public Services and Procurement Canada should implement mechanisms to
- obtain complete, current, and reliable schedules to support shipbuilding projects
- ensure that progress toward forecast targets and delivery timelines is monitored to enable timely decision making
- Public Services and Procurement Canada should improve risk management tools at the National Shipbuilding Strategy’s management level to enable thorough risk analysis; specific, time-bound, and measurable risk mitigation action plans; and better monitoring of the implementation of risk mitigation measures
- Public Services and Procurement Canada should consider the experience of the first 2 shipyards in determining a schedule to achieve target state for the third shipyard.
Related information
| Entities | |
|---|---|
| Completion date | 18 December 2020 |
| Tabling date | 25 February 2021 |
| Related audits |
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