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Ottawa Citizen

Secrecy over troubled Canadian Surface Combatant program continues

Article content Procurement Canada withheld records on the country's most expensive military program for six years only to release them almost entirely censored. Article content The latest failed attempt to get information on the Canadian Surface Combatant project does not bode well for those interested in how their tax dollars are being spent on the mega project, Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin says. Article content Article content Critics have labelled the Canadian Surface Combatant project, the largest single purchase in Canadian history, as a bottomless money pit with little accountability or oversight. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has reported the CSC will cost more than $80 billion to build 15 of the warships. Article content But on March 8 the Liberal government announced that it was proceeding with the building of the first three ships. The government estimated that would cost $22 billion, or slightly more than $7 billion each. Article content The CSC is based on the Type 26 warship being built for the United Kingdom. The British are paying around $1.3 billion for each of their ships, which are slightly smaller and less heavy than the proposed Canadian design. Article content Article content Rubin filed his Access to Information request to Public Services and Procurement Canada on Feb. 25, 2019, for correspondence about the CSC covering a three-year period. He recently received 39 pages with most information censored. Article content Article content 'There is so much secrecy around this program that you have to ask what are (government) hiding?' Rubin said. 'This is a massive expense of tax dollars without any accountability.' Article content Article content Last year the Ottawa Citizen reported on Rubin's efforts to obtain CSC records from the Department of National Defence. After withholding documents for almost three years, DND released nearly 1,700 pages of records that were supposed to outline specific costs and work done so far on the CSC program. All the details of what taxpayers had so far spent and what type of work was done for that money were censored. Article content Prime Minister Mark Carney has stated he wants to review the Access to Information law because of his concerns about how long it takes for records to be released and the amount of censorship. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had also promised to improve the access law, but the process only got worse, with excessive delays and increased censorship.