Canada Buys German Submarines, German Gas Terminals, and Swedish Planes in Single Awkward Afternoon
In what officials are calling a perfectly normal Tuesday, Canada is poised to announce an $86-billion German submarine deal, a landmark LNG export agreement to Germany from a B.C. terminal that technically still needs to be built, and ongoing talks to buy Saab's GlobalEye early warning aircraft from Sweden.
The submarines will alert Canada to threats underwater. The GlobalEye will alert Canada to threats in the air. The LNG terminal will alert Canada to threats from its own environmental review process, which is expected to outlast three of the submarines.
"We are diversifying away from a certain southern neighbour," said one official who declined to be named, mostly because the official had just used the phrase "a certain southern neighbour" without irony. The official then noted Canada would still be importing Florida oranges, Texas software, and the entire concept of cable news.
German officials, for their part, were delighted to sell Canada both the gas and the submarines that would, in theory, defend the ships carrying the gas. A Berlin spokesperson described the arrangement as "vertically integrated," which is European for "we thought of everything."
The tens of thousands of promised submarine jobs will be located in a shipyard to be determined after a procurement process expected to conclude sometime around the heat death of the universe. In the meantime, the Royal Canadian Navy will continue to defend three coastlines with a fleet whose average vessel is old enough to vote, drink, and file for a mortgage it cannot afford.