Whenever Canada faces a world crisis involving international security or humanitarian aid, it is almost always the navy that gets the first call.

So it has been throughout the now almost 100 years of the Canadian navy's existence, and so it proved once again in the Haitian catastrophe.

Military personal from HMCS Halifax take on supplies for Haiti in Halifax harbour on Jan. 14, 2010. Not the biggest ship for the job, its sailors nonetheless brought along $7,000 in relief supplies from their own fundraising. (Mike Dembeck/Canadian Press)

Within hours of the earthquake, Ottawa was able to order up a significant naval operation that formed the vanguard of Canada's largest emergency relief mission ever.

The fast deployment of the frigate HMCS Halifax and the destroyer HMCS Athabaskan, carrying 500 sailors and soldiers, along with medical and relief supplies, construction materials and helicopter support, won wide domestic and international praise.

It gave the Harper government its most effective means to respond in the first weeks as airborne relief remained severely restricted by the limited landing space in Haiti.

The Athabaskan also served as a floating headquarters for all Canadian actions until a shore base could be established.

But while the top naval staff welcome the praise, coming as it happens in the 100th anniversary year of the navy, privately there's also frustration.

The reality is that Canada's maritime response to a disaster of this magnitude should have been considerably larger — and would have been — if only the navy had the right mix of ships, which it demonstrably does not have today.

Size matters

The big problem is size. Both the Halifax (4,700 tonnes) and the slightly larger Athabaskan (5,100 tonnes) are fast, multi-purpose ships adept at many sea operations around the globe.

But they're positively puny in terms of the supplies they can carry.

HMCS Halifax, right, and HMCS Athabaskan head out of the harbour in Halifax on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010 on their way to Haiti.(Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

They were never designed to provide the kind of strategic sealift needed to respond to global emergencies like Haiti or the tsunami that ravaged Southeast Asia five years ago.

These vessels can carry a few hundred tonnes of supply, where many thousands are needed.

In fact, if you combine the size of the two ships together they amount to only about one-third the size of the modern joint support ships (JSS) that the navy has long been promised, but which still languish on the drawing board.

Designed for a vast range of heavy sealift duties, these large support ships can adapt quickly to large humanitarian crises.

They can also re-supply other vessels, carry enormous amounts of equipment, support four to six helicopters and operate as a floating hospital with surgical suites. They can even supply fresh water and generate electricity for towns ashore.

Such a ship would be able to serve as a floating command and communications centre for whole land-sea-and-air missions if required.

Life-extending

However the on-again, off-again $3-billion program to provide three joint support ships has turned into the kind of lingering procurement failure and controversy that Canada's navy is all too familiar with.

First promised, belatedly, by Paul Martin's Liberal government in 2004, the program was shelved in 2008 by the Harper cabinet because of feared cost overruns and confusion over design.

The U.S. sent three large ships to Haiti following the earthquake, a multi-purpose assault ship, an aircraft carrier and the hospital ship, USNS Comfort, shown here, with its 600 medical personnel and 1,000 bed treatment facility. (Associated Press)

The sad reality was that after decades of neglect, neither Ottawa nor the Canadian shipbuilding industry had a clear idea how to build such complicated ships here and they are now embarked on a long negotiation just to try to figure this out.

Meanwhile, that has left an exasperated navy forced to rely on two antique supply ships for our modest sealift: the oiler and replenishment ships HMCS Preserver and sister ship Protecteur.

Both were designed back when I first became a reporter — 45 years ago! — were laid down at the time of Expo '67 and have been pounded by oceans across the globe ever since their launch a couple of years later.

The reason HMCS Preserver, the only large supply ship on the East Coast, could not race to Haiti was that it's ancient hull was being stripped down, for the second time, for a "life-extending refit."

Numbers matter, too

This brings us to another pressing problem, the navy's sheer age.

Admirals have started to warn of a literal "rust out" of a navy with too many old and worn-out ships needing refitting or replacement by larger, more modern vessels all at the same time.

According to the Harper government, the future bill for all this is a gigantic $50 billion over 20 years for what is being called "the most extensive fleet modernization and replacement program in peacetime history."

A plus side in all this is that it will mean considerable employment in Canadian shipyards.

However, an obvious problem is this means a jump in defence spending at a time when a deficit-laden Ottawa is expected to be cash-strapped for many years to come.

What's more, this huge bill comes as Canada prepares to exit from the $18-billion Afghan mission, after which the armed forces will face significant repair and rebuilding expenses.

The navy brass, which felt its needs were often ignored during Afghanistan, now fear its command will get shortchanged again in the coming era of budget cutting.

The wish list

If this happens, our 33-ship navy will be severely stressed. That's because ships take a battering at sea and technology keeps changing, so most warships need replacement after 30 years at the most.

And just to serve that long they need expensive, two-year-long "refits" after 15 years in the water; in effect, virtual rebuilds.

A U.S. navy nurse delivers a newborn Haitian boy aboard the USS Bataan in the aftermath of the earthquake. (Kristopher Wilson/Reuters)

The backbone of Canada's navy, the 12 Halifax-class frigates that were launched in the early 1990s, are at the refit stage now.

The three destroyers, launched in the early 1970s, will need complete replacement this decade.

As all this is going on — and as the three large SSJs are on the drawing board — the government is committed to building a revolutionary new class of 15 Artic patrol ships, acquiring new maritime helicopters, and upgrading its fleet of Aurora patrol aircraft.

The list does go on.

What choices do we have?

"Somehow federal governments always run out of money when defence comes along," Conservative Senator Hugh Segal observed two years ago in a speech about the navy.

It was a prescient warning from one of the handful of Canadian politicians to pay serious attention to the country's maritime needs.

As for the navy itself, it seems anxious to use this 100th anniversary year to break out of its traditional posture as the so-called silent service to try to build as much public support for its future role as possible.

Garnering even passing curiosity, let along support for Canada's navy, has never been easy.

But what makes the issue germane is that, after the Afghan adventure, future governments may well want to opt for more naval instead of land-based missions, which would underscore our current lack of readiness.

There's no escaping the fact that almost all global crises involve sea power and that Canada's ships have almost always been part of that power over the decades, sent to reinforce (and sometimes command) NATO and UN missions from the South Pacific to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.

Looking ahead, the maritime picture looks even more complicated, what with rising new sea powers, the problems of terrorism and piracy, and even new natural catastrophes that possible climate change might bring about.

Should Canada stay the course, or reduce, or even add to its maritime responsibilities? What choices do we have even?

There is much for us to think about as our navy turns 100. And time we did.