I would enjoy being wrong, but I'm highly skeptical any Canadian government in the near future would put up the necessary money to build SSNs locally. If I squint I can just about see them paying for some subs someone else has built. But a nuke shipyard? I'd be stunned.
I suspect that the Prime Minister's trying to undercut the Conservatives .
Arctic Sovereignty is an issue that for the last couple of decades has been claimed by them almost as proprietary issue.
It's Arctic Sovereignty, most of the time it's a bit like the weather. Everybody talks about it but no one ever does anything.
Every couple of years our military rediscovers the north and tosses some money and bodies at it
And then we forget and ignore it until the next time.
Right now the Liberals are trailing badly in the polls and are throwing money at everything and telling people how much they care care about....well everything .
Even Defence issues.
I suspect that building nuke boats here isn't going happen . Based on the cost factor alone. You'd be considered insane just for suggesting it.
I'm not sure it would be worth it to build conventional subs here.
You're talking some serious money just buying and operating then . And they comes the question do I trust the RCN to even operate them?
Not currently, operating reactors requires a different mindset a culture as it were that currently doesn't exist in the RCN.
Mind you the utter military capabilities offered up by SSNs is incredibly tempting. You can see why the Navy in the mid to late 80's gave up the third tranche of City class Frigates for the still born Canadian SSN offered up in the Defence White Paper under MND Perrin Beatty.