Navy commander insists Canada should buy unmodified submarines

OTTAWA – Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee said he has made it clear he wants “no changes” to the design of the submarines Canada intends to buy, due to the highly complex nature of the war machines.

“I have been as explicit as possible that there are no changes to the design,” Topshee said Wednesday.

“If you have ever looked at submarine engineering, every change requires a full reconsideration because anything that goes wrong is potentially existential. When something is designed to sink and come back to the surface, you don’t want to really re-engineer parts of that system.”

Topshee made the comments at a defence procurement conference in the nation’s capital, put on by the Canadian Global Affairs Institute think tank.

The commander of the Royal Canadian Navy says his “perfect” scenario would be to get an order into an existing production line so that Canada can quickly get its hands on a sub originally designed for use by Norway, Germany or South Korea.

“If the power is different on that submarine, then I will buy all my sailors adapters,” he joked.

Ottawa plans to purchase a fleet of up to 12 new submarines and has narrowed down the field to a German bidder and a South Korean one.

Hanwha Oceans and Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, or TKMS, are both vying for the multi-billion-dollar contract to replace Canada’s rapidly aging four Victoria class subs, which are set to be retired over the next ten years.

There’s currently only one operational submarine, which has returned to service after some 13 years under maintenance. Experts have warned that as parts become scarce, some of the subs likely will be stripped for parts as it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain them.

Topshee said new submarine maintenance capabilities will be set up in Canada, with some 70 per cent of the value of the sub contract tied to in-service support.

The plan is to build maintenance facilities on both coasts with Canadian steel and labour, and the boats will need a skilled domestic support workforce to sustain them.

Prime Minister Mark Carney toured one of the new Hanwha Oceans subs in its shipyard in South Korea last month, and a German submarine in August at a shipyard in Kiel.

The Carney government’s first budget books more than $80 billion in defence spending through to the end of the decade. It does not include money for submarines in the fiscal plan — raising questions about when the government plans to announce a winning bidder.

The government is also working behind the scenes to reform how it makes major military purchases.

Doug Guzman started his new job Wednesday as head of the Defence Investment Agency, a new government office meant to centralize and speed up major military purchasing decisions.

Senior bureaucrats said at the conference Wednesday that Ottawa’s new defence spending plans have drawn expressions of interest from investors with large amounts of capital, such as banks and pension funds, and that the government is trying to shed red tape so projects can move at a quicker pace.

The federal government is also expected to release a new defence investment strategy in the coming weeks.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2025.