![]() ![]() ![]() Royal Canadian Navy commander Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee told The Canadian Press in September that Canada’s inability to deploy more frigates to Europe when it has two in the Indo-Pacific region was due to a lack of warships. That deployment, along with the return of two minesweepers from a stint with a NATO naval task force earlier this month, has left Canada without any warships in European waters for the first time since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014. The operational plans will get done, will be developed every single year as we look ahead to the sailing season.” ![]() “We don’t have the operational plans yet,” said one official, who could not be named as a condition of the briefing. The navy is also short about 1,300 sailors as the military writ large struggles with what senior officers have described as a personnel crisis. That’s because the navy has several other commitments, including in Europe, and a limited number of frigates. Yet officials acknowledged during a background briefing on Monday that they have been “grappling” with how to fulfil the government’s requirement to keep a constant rotation of frigates in the Indo-Pacific. One of the hallmarks of the new plan is for the Canadian Armed Forces to maintain a semi-permanent naval footprint while laying the groundwork for closer military co-operation and collaboration with traditional and non-traditional allies in the region. The new strategy includes a promise of millions of dollars of additional funding to boost Canada’s military presence and operations in the Indo-Pacific, alongside more trade and diplomatic investments. OTTAWA - The Liberal government’s new Indo-Pacific strategy has sparked concerns about added pressure on the Royal Canadian Navy at a time when it is already dealing with a shortage of sailors and warships. ![]()
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