The NSS
One of the few things the Cons ever did that I agreed with was the initiation of the National Shipbuilding Strategy or NSS. In a nutshell Canada in the 1990s declared it would buy all naval vessels from other nations, but lacked the fortitude to actually do so. ("Think of the optics of spending billions overseas!!") Meanwhile the Navy was allowed to decline, with every ship class save the reserve Kingston class and the Halifax class frigates allowed to degrade until their condition forced their retirement. The NSS is an attempt to regenerate Canada's completely decayed Naval shipbuilding capacity, and put it on a sustainable, long term footing. I thought it was a good idea. Canada in the way it spends its defense dollars is in essence a naval nation, and if we're going to spend extra money for defense capacity, it makes sense to spend it on shipyards. Despite being a major nation in aerospace, we are rather unique in that we don't heavily subsidize a defense sect...