Public Services and Procurement Canada recorded the award on 24 August: a design-and-build contract to Chantier Davie Canada Inc. of Lévis, Quebec, for six new program icebreakers [E1]. The PSPC page lists the contract value at $11.3 billion, taxes excluded [E1]. Davie’s own release the same afternoon called it a historic fixed-price contract under the National Shipbuilding Strategy and used the same $11.3 billion figure [E3].
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Lévis release framed the same award as an investment of more than $11 billion and as the largest shipbuilding contract in Quebec’s history [E2]. The ships are Polar Class 3 vessels meant to replace aging heavy and medium icebreakers on the Atlantic, the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes in winter and the Arctic in summer [E2][E3]. All six are to be built at Davie. The releases say they will be built with Canadian steel and other domestic materials under the Buy Canadian Policy [E2].
Jobs and timing are the elastic numbers. The Prime Minister’s office said the construction phase alone would create nearly 5,000 jobs [E2]. Davie said construction of the first vessel would begin in 2027, with deliveries through the 2030s [E3]. PSPC lists the next work as basic, functional and production design [E1]. Spoken remarks at the event put first steel next fall and a full fleet in service by 2038; those phrases sit beside, and slightly apart from, the formal 2027 start [E2][E3].
This is a signed NSS contract, not a programme slogan. A $19.6 million initial design award to Davie in 2024 is the prior step on the same page [E1][E2]. No Finance Canada scoring note or new appropriation line was published with the award [E1]. No matching-tariff HS schedule appeared on 24 August either [E1][E2]. The 22 August collapse of talks with Washington is context; Monday’s ledger is the yard, the price and the six hulls [E1][E2][E3].