Royal Canadian Navy still assessing how to dispose of retired warships

HMCS Glace Bay, a Kingston-class coastal defence vessel, cruises near the shore as friends, family and military personnel attend the 50th anniversary of the fire and explosion in HMCS Kootenay at the Bonaventure Anchor Memorial in Point Pleasant Park in Halifax on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan)

The Royal Canadian Navy says it is still assessing how to dispose of eight of its older warships that are being removed from service this week.

Three of the Kingston-class coastal defence vessels – HMCS Saskatoon, HMCS Whitehorse and HMCS Brandon – were officially retired after “paying off” ceremonies in Esquimalt, B.C., on Monday, while five others – HMCS Shawinigan, HMCS Summerside, HMCS Goose Bay, HMCS Glace Bay and HMCS Kingston – will meet a similar fate in Halifax, N.S., on Friday.

The small warships, powered by diesel-electric motors, were built and commissioned into service in the 1990s, operating as training vessels for new sailors and deploying on multiple patrol, search and rescue, mine-detection and drug-interdiction operations abroad.

“As the first Kingston-class ships retire from service, we honour decades of operational excellence and the thousands of sailors from all classes of service across the Royal Canadian Navy who operated these capable ships throughout Canada’s three oceans and as far abroad as Europe, Africa, and South America,” Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee, the commander of the Royal Canadian Navy, said in a statement Monday.

“These ships served Canada with distinction, and I am extremely grateful to all those who served in or sustained them,” Topshee added.

The navy’s four remaining Kingston-class vessels — HMCS Moncton, HMCS Yellowknife, HMCS Edmonton and HMCS Nanaimo — will continue to operate from Halifax before they are decommissioned over the next three years.

Navy spokesperson Jenn St. Germain says the process of disposing of the Kingston-class vessels, which weigh about 970 tonnes each, involves many steps.

“The significant milestones of this process will be uncrewing and/or tying up of a ship, the paying off, and then the transfer of ‘ownership’ from the Royal Canadian Navy to the Department of National Defence (Assistant Deputy Minister of Materiel) so that the ship can be divested,” St. Germain said in an emailed statement to CTV News.

“The disposal method for the Kingston-class will be determined in due course, with careful attention paid to environmental, safety, and financial considerations,” she added. “The Royal Canadian Navy and Assistant Deputy Minister (Materiel) continue to analyze options for safe, environmentally friendly, and financially responsible disposal of the Kingston-class vessels.”

The Department of National Defence announced its plans to retire the vessels in July, saying there would be “no loss of capability” for the navy as the ships left the service. “Their missions will be reassigned to existing assets and new platforms being introduced,” the department said.

Mine-sweeping duties will fall to the navy’s fleet diving units, as well as to remotely piloted systems operated from other navy vessels, while the new Arctic and offshore patrol vessels will assume other Kingston-class roles, such as coastal patrol and counter-narcotics operations.

Training roles, meanwhile, will be shifted to the navy’s smaller Orca-class vessels, the department said.

The navy is also awaiting the construction and delivery of 15 new River-class destroyers, which will replace its retired Iroquois-class destroyers and the existing Halifax-class frigates when the new ships enter service in the early 2030s.