Who's surprised?

The HMCS Chicoutimi catching fire, killing a young Canadian naval officer, and being left virtually derlilct off the coast of the UK is not news. Rather, it's the most recent in an ongoing string of equipment failures costing Canadians their lives.

First let me get out of the way that the Canadian military is in such a state that it can't keep its submarines from catching fire. Enough said about that.

Military spokespeople told CBC that Canada wouldn't buy "just any submarine" and that they were all shocked by this latest tragedy, because in testing the sub had originally met all the requirements. Keeping in mind the helicopter crashes that have put the Canadian military in the news over the last several years, equipment meeting Canadian standards doesn't preclude it from later killing its operators. The problem is not that the sub doesn't meet Canadian standards, the problem is that it does meet Canadian standards.

If we value our nation as much as we say, we need to be prepared to defend it with more effective means than our out-of-retirement equipment.