Ontario Shipyards bets on naval revival with plan to build new fleet of warships
The company is seeking to revive naval shipbuilding on the Great Lakes with the help of provincial grants and international partners.
ST. CATHARINES — A company is gambling it can bring the construction of large military combat ships back to the Great Lakes for the first time since the Second World War.
Ontario Shipyards Inc. is pitching a bold vision to revive naval shipbuilding in Ontario, aiming to gear up to compete with Canada's long-established players for billions in new defence spending.
The company's chief executive, Shaun Padulo, is focusing on the massive Port Weller Dry Docks in St. Catharines, Ont., which he hopes to turn into the birthplace of a new fleet of homegrown, 100-metre-plus long, state-of-the-art navy warships.
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"We walked in and were like, 'What are we doing?'" Padulo said on a tour of the site this summer. "But we saw an opportunity here."
The dry docks are large enough to accommodate ships more than 700 feet long, but the facility is rundown and underused. The parking lot is rutted and choked with weeds, and offices are housed in a wing of a larger complex left derelict for decades.
Padulo's plan involves winning a contract for a new fleet of vessels the navy calls corvettes, which are swift warships for patrolling coastal waters or hunting for hostile submarines near Arctic ice cover.
No money has been committed and no plan has been finalized for the corvette program. But Padulo thinks winning the contract is an attainable goal, potentially with the help of a group of Canadian and international partners that include Italy's massive shipbuilder Fincantieri and its Canadian subsidiary, Vard Marine Inc.
The company has already convinced the provincial government of Doug Ford to back its vision. The Ford government set up a special fund for the shipbuilding industry and gave the firm grants from a provincial skills-training program.
Padulo's pitch is that established players like Quebec's Davie, Halifax's Irving and B.C.'s Seaspan are all too busy building other navy and coast guard ships to build these new corvettes both quickly and domestically.
Ontario Shipyards was passed over for the National Shipbuilding Strategy, with Davie admitted instead. Those shipyards have a massive head start and are already building big navy and coast guard ships.
Foreign giants are also circling the opportunity as Canada pushes to spend billions more on its military.
Padulo is handling the rough political seas of military procurement with an unconventional plan to get the navy's attention.
The push comes as Canada and its allies seek to meet their NATO targets, with billions of new dollars set to flow to rearm the military.
The setting of the Port Weller Dry Docks, with its industrial, steampunk vibe, provided perfect fodder for renowned Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who took pictures of the site.
Burtynsky is famous for his sweeping landscapes depicting humanity's impact on the Earth.
With files from The Globe and Mail