Okay, so here's the story as I understand it so far. Prior to the outbreak of the war the Canadian Navy consisted of 7 destroyers and few minesweepers. Not much of a force considering the size of Canada's coastline. The RCN (Royal Canadian Navy) given its limited resources was intended to protect its home coastal waters only. With this in mind and with an eye to boast Canadian industry it was decided to pursue the Corvette design to first replace a rag tag assortment of ships that were patrolling the home waters and secondly to barter them with Britain in exchange for more destroyers.
Well, things do not always go as planned now do they. The government ordered 54 in the initial order followed closely by another ten to act as replacements. Of these only 24 to 34 were intended for the RCN. The rest were to be bartered. But then the barter system fell through and Canada was left holding the bag with all 64 corvettes on order. Double what it had intended. The British then dedided it would order 10 of the ships to be commissioned into the RN so this alleviated the problem a little or so the RCN thought.
So all of a sudden it has to start a training program for double the amount of staff that it originally projected in facilities that were already inadequate for the original projections. But wait... it gets better. The USN donates 40 of its old and obsolete Town class destroyers to the British who knowing Canada needs destroyers asks Canada to Man 6 of these detroyers. Not what Canada had in mind (it was trying to buy some Tribals) but more importantly where the heck was it going to get the manpower from. You guessed it. The men intended for the corvettes ended up on those ships. So... it now has 6 more destroyers plus 20 more corvettes on the way than it had planned for. But guess what it gets even better. The 10 corvettes intended for Britain are completed and manned with skeleton crews for taking overseas and when they arrive the RN requests that the Canadians continue to man the crews as they are absorbed into the RN. Now this is completely understandable given the tight spot Britain was in but now the RCN is down another 10 crews.
Given this hugely rapid expansion, the lack of equipment - even the very basic navigational equipment was lacking in the early RCN corvettes, after all they were intended for home coastal waters. The lack of training for new corvettes. Much bungling by RCN officers - Everytime a corvette returned to Halifax for repairs its crew was raided of experienced personnel to man the newest corvettes. Some returned with less than 20% of its original crew. Therefore, a crew never had a chance to train and learn to work as a team. Add to that a lack of suitable ports, a schedule that did not leave any down time due to the lack of ships in the early going, ships that were constantly wet because they were not designed for the open ocean and rolled like a bucking bronco, etc. etc.
Is it small wonder then that in first years of the war the corvettes had little success in turning away the U-boats? As one RN officer stated "The Canadian corvettes are only good for picking up survivors."
Anyway, sorry to ramble on but this is all new to me.