During tonight’s program we discussed the Royal Canadian Navy’s “Great Lakes Deployment” with Vice Admiral Dean McFadden. The Navy took the HMCS Ville de Québec through the St. Lawrence Seaway this summer, so the public could tour the ship, engage Navy personnel, and hopefully enlist.

The Navy is going to such lengths to lure new recruits because the maritime force is very short on sailors. As reported by the Toronto Star, the Navy is short 954 sailors out of a regular force of 8,541 people (that is more than an 11 per cent shortfall). To keep the boats in the water, some Canadian warships have gone to sea at 13 per cent below personnel guidelines.

When the Ville de Québec made its stop in Toronto during the September long weekend, I was fortunate enough to tour the ship. My friend, Sean Quinlan (both of whose parents were in the Canadian Forces), took the pictures below, which he was kind enough to share with me.

According to the Navy, the Ville de Québec is a Halifax-class frigate with a displacement of 4,750 tonnes, a top speed of greater than 27 knots, a crew of 225 people, and a range of 4,500 nautical miles. It is truly an impressive vessel.

The current Ville de Québec shares its name with a retired Flower-class Canadian corvette, commissioned in 1942. That Ville de Québec served in the Mediterranean Sea, the English Channel, and the Atlantic Ocean during World War Two.

The current Ville de Québec has protected United Nations’ World Food Program ships in Somalia and done humanitarian work in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina.

Finally, because of our conversation with Rick Hillier at the beginning of tonight’s program, I have embedded a map of NATO’s troop deployments in Afghanistan made by The Agenda’s own David Erwin and Alan Echenberg.

View Afghanistan Troop Deployment in a larger map