Irving Shipbuilding is pushing federal officials to announce a firm date to begin construction on Canada’s new fleet of warships, arguing that will help drive the project along. But the company is facing resistance from federal officials concerned about missing a publicly announced start date, as happened with the Arctic patrol ships now under construction, according to documents released to Postmedia. Federal officials have continued to say that construction of the Canadian Surface Combatant fleet would begin sometime in the early 2020s but no specific date had been set. Irving representatives tried last year to convince federal bureaucrats of the need to set a specific date to begin construction. “DND cautioned against setting a hard production date to work towards, noting the challenges this approach caused on AOPS,” the report noted.

Source: National Post September 23, 2018 19:41 UTC