Feds decide to salvage Coast Guard ship destroyed by vandals

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OTTAWA – After six years of costly indecision, the federal government will spend more than $400,000 to dispose of a Canadian Coast Guard vessel that spent more years as a “dead” ship than a seaworthy vessel.

Built in 2013, CCGS Corporal McLaren M.M.V. will have the unfortunate honour of having spent the majority of its 10 years of service as a boat-shaped hunk of metal more accustomed to dry land than swelling seas.

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Last fall, the coast guard awarded a $412,000 contract to Marine Recycling Corporation to “recycle, through ship breaking, the CCGS Corporal McLaren” after the ship was deemed “surplus” after only a decade of existence.

It’s the end of a saga that has stumped both police and procurement experts over the years.

It began in November 2018, just five years into ship’s service, when the Hero-class vessel was ruined after vandals broke into the Nova Scotia shipyard overnight where the ship was being refit and cut some of the cables keeping it out of the water.

When shipyard employees at Canadian Maritime Engineering (CME) arrived at work the next morning, they discovered an extraordinary scene: the 42.8-meter vessel partially capsized and submerged in the frigid waters of Sambro Harbour, support cables hanging loosely off one of its sides.

The vessel — named after Medal of Military Valour-recipient Cpl. Mark Robert McLaren who was killed by an improvised explosive device while serving in Afghanistan in 2008 — remained partially submerged for over a week before it was refloated, according to Fisheries and Oceans Canada spokesperson Craig Macartney.

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In a lawsuit against CME filed years later, the coast guard claimed the vandals caused $14 million in damage due to CME’s negligence. The company denied any wrongdoing and said in court filings that its shipyard also sustained significant damage.

At the time, Halifax police quickly determined the damage was likely caused by vandals who walked onto the site — which had no fencing, according to reports by Global News — and cut the support cables.

The police told the National Post last year that they had closed the case without laying any charges. In a statement in October, the DFO spokesperson Macartney confirmed the vandals were still unknown.

For years, the “dead ship” sat as DFO and the coast guard debated if it was worth fixing.

Nearly one year after the vandalism, Public Service and Procurement Canada (PSPC) cancelled the repair contract with CME and eventually ferried the CCGS Corporal McLaren to the nearby Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, N.S.

But by 2022, the institute needed the “dead ship” out of its yard due to “space requirements and pending upgrades,” according to procurement documents from PSPC.

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Four years after the vandalism, the coast guard had still not decided whether it would repair or salvage what remained of the ship. So, PSPC put out a public tender for drydocking and storage of the CCGS Corporal McLaren for at least one year.

National Post revealed last year that the government ultimately awarded a half-million-dollar drydocking contract to the Pictou Shipyard owned by CME, the same company that owned the site where the vessel was damaged in the first place.

Two procurement experts told the National Post at the time that the decision ranged from “ironic” to “silly” and argued that the company shouldn’t have been allowed to come anywhere near the CCGS Corporal McLaren ever again.

Macartney, the DFO spokesperson, told the Post in October that the government had finally decided in March to dispose of the vessel.

“After carefully and comprehensively reviewing options and the cost/benefit of remediation to the vessel’s pre-incident condition, repair was found to not be a viable option as the vessel was assessed to being beyond economic repair,” Macartney wrote.

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Court documents filed in Nova Scotia show that CME and the federal government settled the $14-million lawsuit out of court for an undisclosed amount in May 2024.

“The terms of the agreement are protected by client-solicitor privilege, and cannot be disclosed,” Macartney said.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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