More people realizing that Canada should have converted both Asterix and her sister ship as more permanent AORs and cancelling the Protecteur replacements. However, they also conveniently overlook the fact that Asterix and Obelix were built to Mercantile standards and are probably not as survivable as the JSS/AORs:
CBC NewsQuote:
Navy missed a chance to get its new resupply ships at a much lower price, PBO suggests
Yves Giroux acknowledges his analysis would have been more useful years ago
Murray Brewster · CBC News · Posted: Nov 17, 2020 4:36 PM ET | Last Updated: November 18
A portion of the navy's new joint support ship under construction at the Vancouver Shipyard in October 2019. (Contributed/Seaspan)
Converting two civilian cargo ships to serve as resupply vessels for the navy would have been cheaper than building new ones, Canada's parliamentary budget officer has determined.
PBO Yves Giroux conceded that the advice is coming late — that it would have been more helpful to Parliamentarians and the general public had it come years ago, before the federal government signed a contract over the summer with Seaspan for the $4.1 billion construction of two joint support ships (JSS) at the Vancouver Shipyard.
But what are you going to do?
The Parliamentary Budget Office investigates at the behest of MPs — and it was only asked last June by the House of Commons standing committee on government operations and estimates to review the costs of the naval shipbuilding program. (The previous, long-standing forecast was that the navy could get two purpose-built supply ships for $3.4 billion, but that sum quietly increased late last spring.)
(...EDITED)