Decommissioning work is now underway to strip eight retired Royal Canadian Navy warships of equipment and hazardous materials, even as the federal government has yet to decide what to do with the vessels. While Ottawa says it is still assessing disposal options for the retired Kingston-class fleet, it has ruled out one possibility. “There is no intent to convert any of the ships into artificial reefs,” Department of National Defence spokesperson Laura McIntyre-Grills told CTV News. Beyond that, however, the department declined to say which other options remain under consideration and refused an interview about the work. Defence contractor Thales Canada is overseeing the decommissioning work on the eight retired coastal defence vessels. Three ships are being stripped and cleaned in Victoria, while the remaining five are undergoing the same process in Shelburne, N.S. “The work involves the removal and disposal of all contaminants, which includes materials such as oils, insulation, wires, etc., under the purview of the Royal Canadian Navy,” Thales spokesperson Jen Tumminio wrote in an email. “The vessels are expected to remain in each of the yards until 2027,” she added, declining to discuss further details due to sensitivities surrounding onboard equipment. McIntyre-Grills said National Defence continues to assess “a range of options” for the retired warships, prioritizing “safe, environmentally friendly and financially responsible disposal.” “When decisions are made, we will communicate them openly and transparently,” she wrote in an email one week after CTV News first asked about the project. The department also declined to say whether the vessels could be moved elsewhere once Thales completes its preliminary disposal work. The Kingston-class ships entered service in the 1990s and have spent decades serving as both operational vessels and training platforms for new sailors. The warships have been deployed on coastal patrols, surveillance missions, mine countermeasure operations and international counter-narcotics missions. Four vessels from the Kingston class—HMCS Moncton, HMCS Yellowknife, HMCS Edmonton and HMCS Nanaimo —are expected to remain in service in Halifax before they are ultimately scrapped over the next two years. The Department of National Defence announced its plans to retire the vessels last July, saying there would be “no loss of capability” for the navy as the ships were phased out. “Their missions will be reassigned to existing assets and new platforms being introduced,” the department said at the time. Mine-sweeping duties would fall to the navy’s fleet diving units, as well as to remotely piloted systems operated from other navy vessels, it said, while the new Arctic and offshore patrol vessels would assume other Kingston-class roles, such as coastal patrol and counter-narcotics operations. Maritime training, meanwhile, has largely shifted to the navy’s Orca-class patrol vessels.
