CANADIAN SHIPBUILDING

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160733, 20 August 1920, Page 2

CANADIAN SHIPBUILDING

CANADIAN AMBITIONS. During the recent world war Canada initiated a big shipbuilding scheme, which resulted in the establishment of several large plants both on the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts of the Dominion, providing an immense amount of labour for skilled artisans and others, and materially assisting in the development of Canada's commerce on the Seven Seas. In addition to this, the shipyards of the Dominion built largo numbers of 8800-ton deadweight freighters for foreign Governments, notably for French, Norwegian. Swedish, and South American countries, but now that the rush for vessels has somewhat subsided in those quarters the owners of the shipbuilding plants have been busy interviewing Cabinet Ministers in Ottawa with the object of securing further orders to keep their large plants in operation for the next lew years. Thor has been a good deal of beart-scarebing in the legislative hails, where some of the interior members are altogether opposed to governmental subsidies, as such members do not generally enter sympathetically into any shipbuilding programme, or even naval policy for the defence of the country, on. a large scale. Blit it is interesting to note that at a recent private gathering of all the forces of the Coalitionists a decision to endorse Ike Government’s proposal to assist shipbuilding in Canada was arrived at, whereby 50 per cent, of the cost of large foreign vessel orders will 1)6 guaranteed by tlie Dominion, the ships to be constructed on the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Great Lakes. It was announced that tbo Government had been urged either to continue construction for its own account or to grant subsidies. Neither of those wore considered advisable. The decision of the caucus means that further orders will In at once obtainable by all the Canadian yards capable of building steel steamships, and that the. thirty thousand men engaged in the various trades affected in all parts of the Dominion will be assured of steady employment throughout the coming autumn and winter.