The navy's newest vessel arrived in its home port of Halifax amid bitter temperatures and high winds Wednesday morning.
The 26,000-tonne MV Asterix was an existing commercial vessel converted at a cost of $667 million into a naval refueling and resupply ship.
Federal Fleet Services CEO Spencer Fraser calls the ship’s arrival “an exciting day for Canada.”
“We're basically the only NATO country that has a blue-water navy, but doesn't have refueling capability,” says Fraser. “If we didn't have Asterix arriving to serve the navy in 2018, it would be almost a decade where the Canadian navy was reduced to being a very expensive coast guard."
The ship is being leased by the federal government until two joint support ships can be built for the Royal Canadian Navy at the Seaspan yard in Vancouver. Those ships are replacements for the now retired HMCS Preserver and HMCS Protecteur.
For the past couple years, the Canadian navy has leased Chilean and Spanish navy supply ships for refueling.
"This is a stop-gap measure,” says retired navy commander Ken Hansen. “The government has a plan to build two new ones on the west coast of Canada, so just to get us by this ship has been procured, we're not facing any immediate crisis. There's no war on the horizon that we're aware of."
But Ken Hansen thinks the navy could have gone about this differently.
"I thought all along that this was excessively expensive and slow,” he says. “They could have had four commercial tankers for a tenth of that cost in weeks, if not a few months."
The work to transform MV Asterix took place at the Davie Shipyards in Quebec. The supply ship can accommodate up to 150 crew members and more than 200 passengers or disaster relief personnel.
In addition to its other features, the vessel has a platform for two helicopters and a floating hospital.
MV Asterix will undergo sea trials in early January before officially joining navy operations in February.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Allan April.
