The Canadian Government Merchant Marine was intended to retain employment, support ocean trade, and keep yards active. Successive governments stopped replacing ships, and the Depression accelerated the decline; from 1930 to 1939 Canadian yards built only fourteen steamers longer than 46 metres. Canadian lake-steamer orders then went to British yards as the domestic sector became less competitive. Steady merchant and naval orders could have preserved capacity and reduced the cost of emergency expansion in the Second World War.
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Canada let its postwar merchant fleet and yards decay
Canada created a government merchant marine to preserve wartime shipbuilding, then withdrew investment until the fleet and much of the industrial workload disappeared.