Ships delayed every year by inadequate icebreaking in late March and April.   Ottawa—While a federal plan to spend $15.7 billion upgrading the Canadian Coast Guard fleet is encouraging, it needs to include new icebreakers for the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region to avoid delays in valuable marine shipments. President Bruce Burrows of the Chamber of Marine Commerce said once again this spring shipping in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River was disrupted by inadequate icebreaking service. While a newly commissioned ship and two others being refitted as icebreakers will help, they will only be an interim measure, he said. “It's important that these ships be part of the resource pool for Great Lakes-St. Lawrence shipping. “We also need an urgent commitment that new ice-breaking vessels will be built within the next five to 10 years for our region as part of the recently announced program for Coast Guard fleet renewal.” This year two U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers on the Great Lakes were out of service in March and a Canadian icebreaker assigned to Lake Superior was only able to operate at 60 per cent of capability and was idled in April due to mechanical issues. Ice build-ups in the St. Lawrence River during January also led to eight container ships being stuck at the Port of Montreal and 10 others at other Quebec ports. “We need to preserve the international reputation of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence navigation system as being a reliable trade gateway that's open for business,” Burrows said. “But it's not just about dealing with service breakdowns due to the aging fleet; we need more overall capacity. Unpredictable weather events are becoming the new normal and we urge the government to recognize that we need additional ships for contingency purposes.” Burrows said the cost to the Canadian economy of a Canadian vessel in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region being delayed and impacting cargo delivery is estimated at more than $500,000 a day. Overall, ships transport more than 230 million tonnes of goods worth more than $100 billion on the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River waterway annually, generating more than $60 billion in economic activity and supporting 329,000 jobs in Canada and the U.S. The new icebreaker is the Captain Molly Kool whose homeport will be St. John's, Nfld. It and the two ships undergoing refit “will not add any extra capacity but take the place of other vessels that will be out of service for major repairs,” Burrows said. At the ceremony to welcome the ship to the Coast Guard fleet, Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said that it was the first new icebreaker in 25 years. The building program will add 18 new vessels to the fleet in the coming years. Even with them, “the Coast Guard fleet will eventually require more new vessels.” A third shipbuilder will be engaged to build some of the new vessels in addition to Seaspan's Vancouver Shipyards and Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax. Alex Binkley is a freelance journalist and writes for domestic and international publications about agriculture, food and transportation issues. He's also the author of two science fiction novels with more in the works.