HALIFAX
As Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding Inc. gears up to start making the new Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS), first announced in 2007, the federal government is expecting to spend more to build fewer ships. The original plan for up to eight ships has been cut to possibly six, and cost projections have risen by more than 10 per cent.

Construction of new Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships, as seen in this artist's rendering, will start in the fall, but fewer will be built at a higher cost than originally planned. - photo courtesy of Government of Canada

The budget is now $3.5 billion, according to a Public Works and Government Services statement issued Jan. 23, when the build contract with Irving was announced. The government's first estimate was less than $3.1 billion for six to eight ships. Irving will get $2.3 billion to deliver five ships, with incentives if it can deliver a sixth ship by 2022.

"The countdown is on for steel cutting on Sept. 1," Irving CEO Jim Irving stated in a release. Construction of the ships, which will have the ability to patrol the Arctic for about four months each summer, appears to now be on track, despite being behind the original schedule by five years.

The Treasury Board's initial estimates expected delivery of the first ship by the fall of 2013. By 2011, that timeline was pushed back to 2015. In 2012, the current timeline of 2018 was established, but the plan remained to see up to eight ships built.

Touted as a means to exercise Canada's Arctic and offshore sovereignty, the ships will be used in the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans. They are not icebreakers, but will be able to operate in first-year ice up to one metre thick, the government release states.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald quotes Irving president Kevin McCoy as saying that the company wants to finish the Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships contract by 2020 so Irving can move on to its much bigger project, the Canadian Surface Combatant warship replacement, which is worth $26 billion. The company is in the process of building a new facility to build all of these ships.

The AOPS contract "will sustain an estimated 1,000 jobs ... in Halifax and many more at suppliers across Canada," Minister Diane Finley stated in a government release, which noted that 197 Canadian companies have benefited from the strategy. "This is further proof that our shipbuilding strategy is bringing jobs and prosperity to communities on our coastlines and across the country."

The National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy is expected to create up to 15,000 jobs across Canada, according to the government release.