In 2017, HMCS Chicoutimi undertook a dangerous and difficult assignment. For months, the Canadian submarine operated as part of an international task force enforcing sanctions against North Korea. The mission demanded long stretches of silently listening and watching as ships moved along the coast. From this vantage point, Chicoutimi gathered intelligence on vessels suspected of carrying contraband and cued surface warships to intercept them.

The risks were real. North Korea’s navy had fired at, and even sunk, South Korean naval patrols in these waters. For the Royal Canadian Navy, however, the mission was a vindication. Canada’s current submarine force—four boats in total, all bought second-hand from the United Kingdom—has had a troubled history, and none embodied this more than Chicoutimi. In 2004, a fire during her delivery voyage killed one sailor and left the vessel sidelined for years. Operating off the Korean Peninsula, Chicoutimi showed that she, and her Victoria-class counterparts, could still shoulder an operationally significant role.

But their replacements are now in sight. We are in the final stages of selecting up to twelve new submarines, the first of which are expected to take to sea next decade. A German Norwegian consortium and a South Korean company are both competing for the contract. Cost estimates depend on which submarine we buy and how we equip it, but figures in the range of $100 billion are being reported. This sum includes the initial purchase price, plus the cost of operating and equipping the submarines for the decades-long life of the project.

The new submarines are designed to launch long-range precision attacks against targets inland, an entirely new capability for Canada’s fleet, previously equipped only with torpedoes. At present, only the United States, UK, and France operate submarine-fired land-attack cruise missiles among Western navies. This fact speaks to a reality yet to sink in for many Canadians. The subs are only the beginning. We are preparing to pour unprecedented sums into our armed forces. Before Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government stated this year that Canada would finally meet the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s longstanding target of allocating 2 percent of the gross domestic product to defence, we were spending $30.9 billion a year on defence. Carney’s commitment to the new NATO target of 5 percent of GDP for defence and defence-related infrastructure by 2035 will require annual expenditures of up to $150 billion.

The result will be a country forced to confront the reality of projecting power. Submarines embody this. Stealthy and lethal, a modern submarine can clandestinely watch and threaten a potential enemy. Simply knowing that Canada has such weaponry forces an adversary nation to assume that they could be present anytime, anywhere.

In March of this year, the commander of the RCN, Vice Admiral Angus Topshee, made some comments to an Ottawa audience which neatly sum up where the submarine purchase will take us as a country. Given how rarely senior military leaders are so open about these issues, his words are worth quoting at length. The new vessels, he said, represent:

Are we ready for what this means?

Canada’s experience with submarines dates back to 1914, when two were hastily purchased at the outbreak of the First World War. They saw limited wartime service, were sold for scrap in 1920, and were not replaced for many decades. Starting in 1965, three British-built diesel-electric submarines entered RCN service, marking the arrival of Canada’s first modern submarine force. Known as the Oberon class (O-class) and named after Indigenous nations—Ojibwa, Onondaga, and Okanagan—their acquisition had been anything but smooth: initiated, abandoned, revived, and ordered as Conservative and Liberal governments turned over (some things never change).

They had initially been purchased as training targets for the surface fleet, giving destroyers and frigates something to practise against. During the Cold War, however, they were upgraded into combat-capable attack vessels—quietly, and........

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