Scape Scape:
We don't need AIP subs. We need boats that float and crew to man with harbors stocked with equipment to maintain them for decades.
We don't need anything fancy but we need serious commitments. Instead we have a leadership that is embroiled in sexual scandals and are literally above the law. Our political leadership has zero backbone and is terrified of a population that see any serious commitment to a military akin to being a warmonger. Meanwhile what military we DO have to create for ourselves we DO sell to amoral warmongering Saudis who have no scruples in using them on their own people in war crimes.
This is what happens when our only options for defense that have been seriously pedaled to us was an unrealistic and chronically overpriced missile defense shield or nothing at all. Nuclear will never fly here in Canada and no one will touch it. Our City class frigates are a great middle ground but at best they are coast guards for 2 of our three wet boarders. The only way for us to feasibly patrol out three wet boarders is long range ASW aircraft like the old PC-3 Orions did and we can use prop driven aircraft for that on the cheap no need for fast attack craft and SUBS. Diesel electric is all we need. A few icebreakers wouldn't hurt either.
The AIP subs are diesel-electric subs, they just are capable of staying submerged much longer than the older diesel electric subs.
There's not much in the way of prop engine ASW planes nowadays - the P8 Poseidon, which most of our allies fly, is a converted 737.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_P-8_PoseidonHowever, the C-295 (our new SAR plane) comes in an ASW configuration, but it's range is about half of the P-8. Bombardier considered developing a Dash 8 patrol aircraft, but that looks like it was cancelled. I don't know about you, but based on their checkered past, I wouldn't trust Bombardier with $5 billion (the value of the Canadian Multimission Aircraft Project).
If you don't want those planes, the only other option in the free world is the Kawasaki P-1, but I don't think it has certification outside Japan yet.
We're building icebreakers for both the Navy and Coast Guard, and the Harry DeWolf class AOPVs actually look pretty capable - the first of the class is actually doing a circumnavigation of North America right now, sailing through the Arctic, down the West Coast, through the Panama Canal and into the Caribbean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_DeW ... rol_vesselAfter the AORs are done, we're supposed to build the Diefenbaker, a big Class 1 icebreaker that will be almost as capable as the Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCGS_John_G._Diefenbaker