Well I'm never happy about it, but there are several good reasons why this is probably not a bad idea.
The Navy is just massively undersized, especially the reserve element, and its really tough to recruit for that in the praries since your deployment would take you far from home, realistically it would be tough to get enough sailors from the coast to fill reserve slots. Plus recruiting is really focused on land forces.
The Kingston Class patrol boats just aren't very good boats. They're lightly armed with 2 .50 cals, and they have a vintage WWII main gun, they're slow and they don't maneuver very well. Its time to mothball them.
In terms of spending priorities. The Halifax class Frigates that form the backbone of our Navy are a few years overdue for their half life refits, and those are scheduled to start this year and take 18 months per ships. While the Halifax Frigates are excellent ships, they are hitting their 20 year anniversary and at some point we need to look at the next generation of ships. We still don't have effective command and control Destroyers that we can form task groups around, and that needs to be looked at.
Our fleet replenishment ships that carry fuel, food, parts and weapons are dangerously out of date, the Navy needs to either buy or build new ones, but Canada doesn't have the ship building capabilities anymore.
The Victoria Class Submarines are coming into play and can probably take over some of the patrol duties of the Kingston class patrol boat. An article on what Canada's subs have been up to since the fire.
http://www.cdfai.org/bergenarticles/...al%20force.pdf
Canada still needs to move forward on the replacement of the Sea King Helicopters for the Halifax class frigates and our remaining destroyer, we also need to upgrade our land based naval search and rescue.
Our CP-140 patrol and antisubmarine aircraft are hitting their obsolences factor, and are losing their ability to patrol the coast.
Combine these issues with the war in Afghanistan, the need to upgrade or replace our AFV's, and the need to start replacing the CF-18 and there are greater monetary and personal priorities then the coastal defense vessels.