Two Countries Are Battling to Build Canada’s Submarines. Almost No One Is Asking What the Subs Are For

Canada has spent so many years talking about replacing the Victoria-class submarines that it is easy to forget the project might actually happen. The Canadian Patrol Submarine Project began with a crowded field of twenty-five expressions of interest and has now narrowed to two serious contenders, Germany’s Type 212CD and South Korea’s KSS-III. Both formal proposals are in Ottawa’s hands. Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the government intends to identify a preferred supplier before the end of June, though the contract itself is expected much later.

Canada’s Big Submarine Call 

The Royal Canadian Navy long-range patrol submarine HMCS Victoria (SSK 876) arrives at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor for a port call and routine maintenance. The visit is Victoria’s first to Bangor since 2004. (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Ed Early/Released)

Victoria-Class Submarine Canada Navy. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

The competition has also become something larger than a straightforward naval procurement. Germany has sent Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to Ottawa to make the case for its bid and has even floated measures intended to accelerate deliveries. South Korea has wrapped its proposal in a broad industrial package that reaches well beyond shipbuilding. By any Canadian standard, this has become a major strategic and political decision.

That is enough to make old hands in Ottawa a little suspicious. Canadian governments have announced defense procurements before. They have also postponed them, redesigned them, and quietly let them drift while the world moved on.

Still, this one appears to be moving.

The conversation around it has settled into familiar territory. One bid promises one set of industrial opportunities, another promises a different set. There are discussions about jobs, regional development, manufacturing partnerships, and technology transfer. None of that is unusual. It would be strange if a government preparing to spend something approaching sixty billion dollars ignored those questions altogether.

The stranger thing is how little time gets spent on what the submarines are actually for.

The Geography Has Not Changed

A few years ago, it was still possible to hear Canadian defense discussions framed around expeditionary operations and broad notions of being a middle power with global responsibilities. Some of that language survives, mostly because governments are slow to abandon old habits.

But that language is no longer grounded in geopolitical reality.

Canada’s real strategic problems now sit much closer to home than they once appeared to. The North Pacific matters because that is where competition among the major powers increasingly reaches North America. The Arctic matters because it is becoming more accessible even as it remains politically unsettled. The North Atlantic matters because Europe and North America are still tied together by infrastructure and sea lanes that suddenly look vulnerable again.

Submarines occupy an odd place in all this. Most of the time, they are valuable precisely because nobody sees them. They complicate an adversary’s planning. They gather information. They make uncertainty expensive.

A country that intends to operate seriously in the North Pacific, the Arctic, and the North Atlantic ought to begin there when it chooses a fleet.

That does not automatically point toward Germany’s Type 212CD or South Korea’s KSS-III. People can argue that question in good faith. But the argument should turn on the operational demands those waters impose. A submarine that cannot do what Canadian geography demands is the wrong submarine, no matter how attractive the package around it happens to be.

There is another aspect to the decision that receives less attention than it probably should. Buying a submarine also means settling into a way of doing business for a very long time. Crews learn from the people who built the boat. Refits happen in familiar places. Supply arrangements develop their own momentum. Canada already spends much of its strategic life looking across the North Atlantic, and the German proposal fits comfortably inside that world. The Korean bid would pull some of that activity toward an Indo-Pacific partner that has been making an energetic push into the global defense market.

None of that settles the argument, but it does mean that Ottawa is choosing more than a design for the next generation of submarines.

Politics Usually Wants Something Else

Stephen Fuhr, the secretary of state for defense procurement, said earlier this year that economic benefit to Canada would drive the decision. The remark attracted some attention because politicians rarely put matters quite so directly.

It also reflected a political reality that is older than this project.

Large procurements create winners and losers long before the first piece of equipment enters service. Provincial governments pay attention. Labor unions pay attention. Industry pays attention. Members of Parliament notice where the factories are going and where they are not.

The Korean proposal has amassed an impressive array of industrial partnerships that extend beyond shipbuilding itself. The German side has made its own economic case. That is what serious competitors do. They respond to the priorities their customers appear to have.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Industrial capacity is part of national strength, and countries that cannot manufacture complex systems for themselves eventually discover the limits of strategic dependence.

But there is a difference between treating economic benefits as an important consideration and treating them as the central one.

The qualities that decide whether a submarine survives in combat are difficult to turn into a political announcement. They do not photograph especially well. They cannot easily be translated into regional investment figures. They become visible only when someone has to take the boat north and trust it to do what it was built to do.

Canadian politics has always had a practical streak. Governments prefer things they can count. Jobs can be counted. New facilities can be counted. Under-ice endurance is a harder sell.

Perhaps that is simply how democratic politics works.

The Decision That Lasts

There is a temptation to assume that if Ottawa chooses either of the finalists, it cannot really go far wrong. Both are capable designs. Both come from advanced industrial states. Both would represent a substantial improvement over the status quo.

That may all prove true.

The risk lies somewhere else.

A government can gradually convince itself that the industrial package and the operational requirement point in the same direction because admitting otherwise creates a political problem. If that happens, the military logic quietly adjusts itself to fit the economic one.

Nobody has to make a reckless decision for that to occur. Nobody has to ignore military advice. It is enough for the larger political conversation to revolve around different questions.

There is also a habit in Canadian defense policy of assuming that time is abundant. A preferred supplier can be announced. Negotiations can continue. Cabinets change. Trade disputes intrude. Lawyers become involved. The file remains active, but the years pass anyway.

The submarines that Canada is replacing are not especially interested in those political rhythms.

Sometime in the next decade, the country will discover what it really decided to buy. It may be found that the industrial and operational arguments pointed to the same answer all along. It may not.

The waters to the north and on either coast will not become less important while Ottawa sorts that out. They were there before this competition began, and they will still be there long after the headlines about jobs and investment have faded.

About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham

Andrew Latham is a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.