Is it time to scuttle Canada’s fleet of lemon submarines?

You hear this advice all the time: If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

It seems like Canada's decision to buy some second-hand submarines from Great Britain falls into that category.

It sure seemed like a good deal at the time. The Royal Navy had four surplus, state-of-the-art diesel-electric subs they offered to Canada's defence department at a bargain price of $750 million on a lease-purchase arrangement, including modifications, relocation and other costs.

Canada's defence department said it needed a replacement for its obsolete Oberon-class sub for sovereignty and fisheries patrols and to meet its NATO obligations. This was an ideal alternative to spending much more for new vessels.

"As with a lot of cool stuff we bring home from yard sales, it didn't take long for the deal to seem a little less of a bargain," Vancouver Sun reporter Craig McInnes wrote Wednesday.

"Within a year, the National Post was reporting that hidden costs and a wish list for upgrades had pushed the real tab for the four used subs to somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2 billion."

The cost of bringing the boats out of mothballs and modifying them ballooned, spurring critics to call for the deal to be scuttled. Ominously, a fire aboard HMCS Chicoutimi on its maiden voyage in 2004 killed a crew member. The other subs were kept in port while their manifold deficiencies, due partly to years in mothballs, were dealt with.

"This week another fire, this one less serious, broke out in a radio tower on HMCS Victoria while it was docked at the Esquimalt (B.C.) naval base," McInnes wrote. "Victoria recently completed a five-year, $195-million refit and is as close as we have at the moment to an operational submarine."

HMCS Corner Brook is being refitted after hitting bottom while on a training cruise off the B.C. coast and it won't be back in service for five more years. HMCS Windsor will complete a refit next year but is suffering rust problems that will limit its diving ability, according to The Canadian Press.

"The navy now says that our submarine fleet will be at operational strength — that is, with three of the four submarines in operation — in 2013, or 15 years after we bought them," McInnes noted. "I asked the navy for the total costs to date, but was told that since the refits are still in progress, they don't know the numbers."

Canada's submarine saga proves a couple of things, McInnes concluded. Whatever their role in Canada's defence was supposed to be, the navy's managed to do without them for 13 years.

"Meanwhile, the hundreds of millions of dollars that continue to be spent on these seagoing lemons has not been available for conventional coastal patrol craft or the long-promised icebreakers that could have been built here."

Secondly, promises the subs will perform up to snuff in the future simply aren't credible, McInnes wrote.

"It's time to cut our losses and scuttle this fleet."

(CP Photo)