Request For Information - Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaking and Tow Capacity

Backgrounder

Introduction

The Canadian Coast Guard operates a large and diverse array of assets across Canada, including a fleet of 117 vessels, 22 helicopters, some 17,000 aids to navigation and more than 420 communications towers. Together, they contribute to the safe passage through Canadian waters of more than 5,600 commercial vessels, 18,000 commercial fishers, and 6 million recreational boaters each year.

Coast Guard intervenes to protect the marine environment in over 1,100 marine pollution incidents each year, across a geographic area spanning 7.1 million km2, including 275,000km of coastline – more than any other country in the world. It directly supports the movement of 480 million tonnes of marine cargo valued at more than $210 billion and enables critical resupply operations to Arctic communities where the Coast Guard is often the sole federal presence. Each year, its Search and Rescue program assists more than 19,000 people in 10,000 marine search and rescue incidents –an average of 52 people assisted and 15 lives saved each day.

Ageing Icebreakers

Crucial to the Coast Guard fleet are its 14 icebreakers that maintain open tracks through ice, escort ships, free ice-beset vessels, break up ice in harbours, resupply isolated northern communities, and protect them from flooding. Many of Coast Guard’s icebreakers, however, are nearing the end of their operating lives; some, built in the 1960s and 1970s, have already exceeded their intended years of service.

New replacement icebreakers will be built in Vancouver Shipyards (VSY) under the National Shipbuilding Strategy, with delivery expected in the 2020s. In the meantime, maintenance, repairs and modifications are helping to keep older icebreakers in service, though it comes at the cost of removing them from duty, sometimes for months at a time.

Tow Capacity

Coast Guard also seeks to strengthen its tow capacity so that if ocean-going vessels lose power in Canadian waters they can be towed to safety, thereby preventing marine pollution incidents. Improving marine safety and tow capacity to world class standing are key elements of the Government of Canada’s Oceans Protection Plan.

Request for Information

Coast Guard is exploring options to address these challenges. The first step is to reach out to the shipbuilding and shipping industries for potential interim options that could provide Coast Guard with any vessels it may need pending delivery of new ships under the NSS. This has led Coast Guard, in collaboration with Public Services and Procurement Canada, to issue a Request for Information (RFI) inviting the marine industry to come forward with realistic, actionable advice on options to inform Coast Guard’s planning.

The RFI and the NSS

The Request for Information complements the National Shipbuilding Strategy by allowing Coast Guard to efficiently plan for the delivery of new ship construction at Vancouver Shipyards (VSY), as it begins to plan for the retirement of its older assets.

For further information, please contact:

Media Relations
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Ottawa
613-990-7537

 

(November 2016)


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