Is Canada’s Arctic patrol ship program on the same course as the F-35s?

Screwing up military procurement contacts is as Canadian as shinny and maple syrup.

Word that there are questions surrounding the Conservative government's program for new Arctic patrol ships, including of course the cost, should startle no one.

You can go back a century to the infamous Ross rifle that Canadian soldiers took into the trenches in the First World War, only to find the mud made them jam and worse — the bolts sometimes fell out or even flew back and hit soldiers in the face when they fired.

Flash forward to more recent history and you've got the Liberals' purchase of second-hand British submarines that have been in the repair dock more than at sea, the endlessly delayed replacement for the navy's ancient Sea King helicopters and of course the budget-busting F-35 stealth fighter program.

It is surprising that the government appears to be circling the wagons on questions about the plan to build eight ice-capable offshore patrol vessels, just as it did when questions were first raised about the F-35 program's soaring costs.

[ Related: F-35 stealth fighter purchase faces challenges ]

CBC News is reporting that Ottawa appears to be overpaying for the design of the new ships, based on the costs of similar vessels bought by other countries.

The $288-million price tag for Halifax shipbuilder J.D. Irving to design the ships is many times higher than for ice-capable patrol vessels bought by Norway, Denmark and Ireland, according to ship-building experts CBC News interviewed.

And that's before construction of the ships, which is covered under a separate contract between Irving and Public Works Canada, which is administering the program for the Department of National Defence. The total cost of the program as announced in 2007 was estimated at $3.1 billion.

According to CBC News, Norway paid just $5 million to design the Svalbard, the vessel on which the Canadian ships' design will be based. The total cost including construction was $100 million in 2002. Denmark got two similar ships for $105 million in 2007, all in. The Irish navy is spending $125 million for two patrol ships now under construction, CBC News said.

Shipbuilding experts said vessel design normally makes up 10 to 20 per cent of the total cost of a ship.

CBC News said neither Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, Defence Minister Peter MacKay nor officials in Ambrose's department could explain the cost discrepancy.

When confronted with the opinions of experts from other shipyards, MacKay said simply, "other shipyards are wrong."

[ Related: Canada to impose fines on Sikorsky for helicopter delay ]

If the defence minister's, um, defensiveness sounds familiar, it's because MacKay stonewalled questions about the F-35 program's costs for months before conceding it had grown to $25 billion from a previous estimate of $15 billion, as critics had warned. The original estimate was $9 billion.

The assessment was confirmed last year in a report by the auditor general, who hammered MacKay's department for keeping Parliament in the dark. A further review put the total life-cycle cost of the fighters at almost $46 billion.

The entire fighter program has now been "reset" to see if there are cheaper alternatives to the F-35, further delaying replacement of the RCAF's aging CF-18 Hornets. The process was put in the hands of a separate National Fighter Jet Procurement Secretariat under Public Works.

Is the patrol-ship program following the same narrative arc?

Last month, the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, along with the Rideau Institute, produced a report warning the program was a "titanic blunder," CBC News reported.

It took issue not just with the costs but with the kind of vessels the government wanted, saying the Svalbard-class light icebreaker's design contained too many compromises to fulfill Canadian requirements.