Canada and the United States have a lot of rebuilding to do. Trade and diplomatic relations for one, shipbuilding for another.

Both need work on both sides of the border, and shipbuilding makes a good starting point for the relationship rebuild because Canada can be a key contributor to restoring a 20th-century North American strength that has become a 21st-century weakness.

Recall, for example, that Canada and the U.S. were shipbuilding powerhouses during and immediately after the Second World War.

Back then, Canada was the world’s fourth-largest shipbuilder; the United States was the largest.

Decades of industrial decay and neglect, coupled with myopic political decisions, have relegated both to fringe-player status in the shipbuilding major leagues.

The game is now played almost exclusively in Asia, where 90% of the world’s commercial ships are built.

However, as the Center for Maritime Strategy’s (CMS) Leveraging the Allied Maritime Industrial Base for U.S. Shipbuilding report makes clear, the atrophy of North America’s shipbuilding abilities threatens far more than Western manufacturing capacity.

America’s inability to produce commercial ships on time and on budget, while strategic naval competition intensifies, is eroding the continent’s geopolitical security.

“The decline of the U.S. MIB [maritime industrial base] carries significant risks,” the report warns, “as American maritime industrial capacity is inseparable from its national power.”

Admiral James Foggo, the dean of CMS, summed up the situation succinctly during the report’s May 21 release: “America’s maritime industrial base is in crisis …”

However, that crisis is not exclusive to the U.S.

The CMS points out that many of America’s allies, including Canada, face the same threats from the deterioration of their shipbuilding capacity.

The 139-page report from the non-profit, non-partisan research institution provides an assessment of “shipbuilding infrastructure, technological capacity, and strategic positioning” within five key U.S. partners: South Korea, Italy, Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

The list of allied shortcomings and challenges is long and complex; however, there are also many areas where the U.S. and its allies can pool resources and cooperate to begin restoring the West’s collective shipbuilding strength and resilience.

Further neglect is not an option if the West hopes to maintain any ambitions of sea superiority.

As Matthew Reisener, CMS senior national security adviser, pointed out during the release of the report, “I think one of the British shipbuilding experts that we spoke to while we were in that country emphasized it best when he said the most expensive way to build ships is to stop building them and then try starting again.”

Aside from dodging that descent into shipbuilding inertia, Western domestic maritime shipbuilding challenges, according to the CMS report, include labour shortages, “outdated shipbuilding technology and infrastructure, inefficient processes for designing and building ships, disjointed government-commercial relations, and supply chains that are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disruption.”

The result: American manufacturing can no longer build complex warships.

That should be sounding a national security red alert – especially considering that, while American shipyards that once produced approximately 5% of the world’s commercial shipping tonnage have been reduced to a feeble 0.1%, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has built the world’s largest fleet of more than 370 warships.

The CMS report adds that China is not the only threat to Western naval power. Russia and North Korea are ever-present dark-fleet adversaries.

Mitigating those threats will take more than American bravado.

So, atop the West’s maritime revival to-do list is cooperation.

“America needs to leverage its allies,” Reisener said, “and our strong network of naval allies is one of the few advantages that we really have over China that they can’t match, and certainly something that we need to lean into more.”

He noted, for example, that Canada, Finland, and the U.S. are partnered in the US$6.1 billion Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE Pact) to boost Arctic shipbuilding capacity.

ICE Pact includes the construction of 11 Arctic Security Cutters (ASCs) for the U.S. Coast Guard.

Vancouver-based Seaspan Shipyards is contributing design and other icebreaker expertise to six ASCs, as President Donald Trump announced last October.

Under Canada’s National Shipbuilding Strategy, Seaspan will design and build 21 icebreakers for the Canadian Coast Guard.

The ICE Pact, Reisener said, could lead to “more multilateral shipbuilding programs.”

Foggo also noted that Canada has available dry dock capacity that could be used for U.S. Navy ships, especially on the West Coast.

According to the CMS report, the Pacific has 60% of U.S. Navy ships, but only 33% of NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command)-certified dry docks.

“Seaspan could be a stopgap until U.S. West Coast infrastructure becomes sufficient,” the report notes, adding that “[because] Seaspan’s parent – the Washington Companies – is an American company, the navy may be able to get a waiver to more easily conduct maintenance at Seaspan even though it is located in Canada.”

Among the CMS report’s clarion calls to action is the need to address North American shipbuilding’s labour shortage by training and cultivating people who have the skills to design and build ships and, by extension, build and maintain strong and independent countries.

In short, the West needs more industry builders and doers, and fewer political gripers and parasites.

A coordinated and mutually beneficial push to restore North America’s shipbuilding abilities would be a good first step on Western exceptionalism’s road to recovery.