A voluntary “good neighbour” noise policy at a shipyard on Vancouver Island contributed to an accident that led to permanent defects in Canada’s most advanced navy submarine.
Canada purchased several hunter-killer submarines from the United Kingdom in the late 1990s. Since then, the renamed Victoria-class vessels have been plagued by multiple mechanical and electrical problems. To date, the fleet has spent more time undergoing repairs than in active service.
One of those submarines, HMCS Corner Brook, struck the seafloor off Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, leading to extensive damage. An extended overhaul in the federally owned Esquimalt Graving Dock kept the submarine out of service until April 2025.
The repairs and overhaul was initially meant to conclude in 2016. But delays dragged on, partially due to a 2019 fire and accident in 2020.
That year, the Department of National Defence found a thumb-sized hole connected to a leak in a main ballast tank — the part of the submarine that controls buoyancy — caused when workers inadvertently overpressurized the tank.
Documents previously obtained by BIV in federal court filings show the incident led to significant “damage, deformation and separation” of several of the submarine’s bulkheads.
A third-party investigation report commissioned by the contractor Babcock Canada found the 2020 accident was caused by a series of avoidable failures — including a lack of key equipment, a breakdown in communication and pressure to complete a critical test more quickly because of a local noise bylaw.
Ballast tank testing was initially planned to last two days, but in the end, was compressed into a single 24-hour period.
One of the primary time pressures came from a city noise bylaw, according to the investigation report. The morning of the incident, workers were told the bylaw would prevent them from using an external air compressor after 11:30 p.m., the report said.
On the day of the incident, workers filled the ballast tanks with 30,000 litres of water to carry out a pressure test.
When the test was over, they hooked up an unregulated air compressor to the tank to help force the water out faster in what was later discovered to be an unsanctioned practice.
Within about five minutes, workers found structural damage and water leaking from a hole near the hydroplane.
When previously reached for comment, a spokesperson with the Township of Esquimalt said its noise bylaws do not apply to the shipyard or the navy base.
Questions put to the Department of National Defence in June did not answer why a federally owned dry dock was adhering to a municipal noise bylaw.
Department of National Defence spokesperson Cheryl Forrest said the permanent defects from the incident do not affect the submarine's strategic capabilities. When asked about the noise bylaw, Forrest initially said: “All applicable regulatory requirements are being followed.”
When pressed further to explain why a federally owned shipyard was adhering to a municipal noise bylaw, DND spokesperson Brendan Calado-Luke said Babcock Canada and Seaspan’s Victoria Shipyards Company (VSL) — the subcontracted labour force — are both required to adhere to Esquimalt Graving Dock’s “Environmental Best Management Practices.”
Those practices include silent hours between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. in order to be a “good neighbour” and reduce any negative impact on surrounding populated areas, said Calado-Luke.
While work continues 24 hours a day, seven days a week, during silent hours, industrial noise is expected to remain below 60 decibels.
Calado-Luke said the facility’s requirement to maintain silent hours was “only a single factor” in the 2020 decision to compress work into a 24-hour timeline.
Robert Huebert, executive director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, previously told BIV the idea that workers were rushing to finish work on a crucial piece of Canadian military hardware because of local noise concerns was “totally ridiculous.”
Mark Norman, a former vice-admiral and commander with the Royal Canadian Navy, told BIV in June that the 2020 incident is symptomatic of a country that has become obsessed with “big shiny objects” in the military instead of building up a defence industrial base.
“It annoys the hell out of me that these types of things happen,” the former vice-admiral said. “There is a fine line between ‘shit happens’ and ‘here we go again.’ And sadly, there are too many examples of things falling on the ‘here we go again’ side.”
In a statement, DND said the 2020 incident was not related to industrial capacity and that its contractors “continuously monitor and improve operational processes to address areas of concern.”
“As a result, enhancements were made to pressure testing procedures, equipment, and safety protocols to prevent a recurrence,” said Calado-Luke.
