POLITICS-CANADA: Submarine Death Probe Gives Defence Critics Sinking Feeling

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, May 30 2005 (IPS) - The contested purchase of four second hand, diesel-powered submarines from Britain continues to reverberate in Canada following an inquiry into the death of a naval officer and injury of nine other seamen during a fire on one of the vessels, the HMCS Chicoutimi.

A Canadian naval board of inquiry concluded in a 700-page report released earlier this month that ”no one can be held personally responsible” for an electrical short circuit on Oct. 5, 2004, which caused fires onboard the HMCS Chicoutimi, the last of four submarines delivered to Canada. It had left Scotland on its maiden voyage under the Canadian flag to Canada when a high wave off the Irish coast flooded parts of the sub.

The Chicoutimi, which had been traveling on the surface with some hatches open while crewmembers performed repairs to the ventilation system, was due to dive later that day. Navy Lieutenant Chris Saunders died in the blaze and another nine crewmembers were injured. A number remain under observation after being exposed to cancer-causing chemicals released when certain components burned.

The Canadian navy ”pushed” to have the Upholder class submarines in order to be in the big leagues of the world’s top militaries, said Steven Staples, a defense analyst with the advocacy group Polaris Institute. The acquisitions cost some 750 million Canadian dollars (597 million US dollars) and landed the navy with ”lemons” that have turned into ”death traps,” he added.

”The repair costs have been mounting, performance is less than advertised, [and] finally there is an accident and a death. They do a secret investigation – the same naval leadership that lobbied for the submarines in the first place – and they come out with a report that says nobody is at fault. Does that surprise anybody?” Staples told IPS.

Problems continue to plague the former British subs, Staples said, pointing to the more recent example of the HMCS Victoria, which had to return to its base at Esquimalt, British Columbia, on Canada’s west coast on the same day of its outing because of excessive sparks in the vicinity of its electrical motors.

Navy spokesperson Capt. Chris Henderson told IPS that the technical problem was ”minor” and the HMCS Victoria ”was back at sea within hours.” Submarines are complex pieces of equipment requiring a great deal of maintenance and ”are as complicated as the space shuttle,” he said.

Henderson rebutted Staples’s implication that the Navy had resorted to unusual tactics to restrict scrutiny of the incident.

Under Canadian naval regulations, inquiries into accidents usually are held behind closed doors. ”These are neither courts of law, nor are they quasi-judicial bodies,” he said. ”They are internal, administrative panels that are convened to get the facts behind incidents and events within the Canadian forces.”

For defence critics, however, the submarines have come to symbolise what they described as misguided defence procurement priorities and misleading justifications by defence officials for the submarine purchases.

David Rudd, president and executive director of the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies think tank, said the government had ”quietly” shelved one of its main rationales for buying the submarine.

”There doesn’t seem to be much public interest or media interest in the fact that this great big selling point has now been jettisoned,” Rudd told IPS.

The government originally had said that the vessels’ stealth features made them ideal for lying undetected under the Arctic ice for the purpose of monitoring foreign vessels and submarines in Canada’s vast northern territorial waters.

The government of then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien cited the subs’ stealth features when it agreed in 1998 to purchase four of them.

But the submarines are battery operated and not equipped to go under the Arctic ice for lengthy periods of time, said Staples, and making them fit for this kind of duty involves heavy refitting.

”The modifications are incredibly expensive, in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It requires cutting open the hull and putting in a new propulsion system,” said Staples.

Canada still needs to guard against over fishing off its waters by foreign trawlers but there are other less expensive ways to deal with that, Rudd told IPS. Instead of submarines, he said, ”I might have put money into (surface) support vessels or new destroyers.”

Ken Epps, a senior analyst at the Church-supported peace group Project Ploughshares and early critic of the submarine deal, said he remains concerned that more ”mistakes” will be made in the purchasing of major items as the government in Ottawa ramps up military spending.

”One of the problems is that for some time, there has been this onslaught of media pieces and editorials and opinions that Canada is not spending enough on its military without any real examination of what the military needs,” said Epps, the author of a 1998 article in which he argued the British submarines would prove ill-suited for Canadian military needs.

The situation in Canada has become comparable to that in the United States, where it often is assumed that more money is spent on the military, more security is obtained in return, Epps told IPS. ”Money could be spent in non-military areas, probably much more effectively,” he added, highlighting alternatives including development aid that could be used to prevent the outbreak of conflict in a failed state.

At the same time that the submarines were being purchased, the Canadian department of national defence was cutting back its contribution to international peacekeeping as part of a long-term trend, according to Epps. In the 1960s and 1970s, Canada was among the major contributors to U.N. peace missions ”but today it is not even in the top 20,” he said.

”If you are spending a lot of money on one programme, that means you are going to have limited options in spending in other areas,” added Epps.

Among consistent opponents of the submarine deal, members of the opposition Bloc Quebecois on the House of Commons defense and veterans affairs committee issued a dissenting report in April that took to task what they termed ”the amateurish” Canadian negotiators in their discussions with the British during 1990s.

Bloc members cited one problematic section in the purchase contract, which they said ”exempts” the British ”from having to guarantee the design and construction of the submarines while Canada acknowledges that the submarine design has been proven.”

Laura Markle, a spokesperson for the British High Commissioner, told IPS that Britain supports the findings of the Canadian naval report that no one is to blame for the accident.

”There is no request and nor will there be any request, and this has been said publicly by the Canadians, for any request for compensation” for the accident and death, Markle said.