I wouldn't necessarily go for a replacement CV, but iirc the retirement of HMCS Bonaventure severely gimped Canada's ASW and expeditionary warfare capabilities. Some sort of LPD/LHD should have been procured to make up for the loss.
I remember being both surprised and impressed when I discovered
we had an aircraft carrier. It was at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, ON. (I was more surprised by the AIR-2 Genie, TBH — the museum, probably wisely, doesn’t mention that it was a nuclear weapon carried by Canadian aircraft.)
The shift to ASW as the sole mission (
Bonaventure spent its early career with F2H Banshee fighters aboard, but ended as purely ASW) made sense in Cold War terms. Still, mid-60s ASW was very limited compared to what was possible with sonobuoys a decade or two later, and ASW, fortunately, remains a mission NATO has never had to perform. Politically, a carrier capable of force projection on land might’ve been a good thing for Canada, although it would’ve been expensive, and we probably would’ve had to buy Harriers.
Overall, it seems like NATO in the Cold War was content with having the USN do almost everything that wasn’t ASW and letting the RN fill in most of the rest with AEW helicopters and Sidewinder-armed Harriers. I don’t think that was terribly foolish, but if you consider the missions that NATO members have actually performed, ground strike capability in an asymmetrical warfare situation would have been helpful for Canada, the Netherlands... and, since I do not like the Super Etendard or any Mirage, France.