Quote:
Originally Posted by karl262
Buying a new fighter plane that will secure Canadian airspace for the next 40 years is not like buying a new printer for every office in a federal building. Yes, there is a technical format that all government agencies are supposed to perform in any type of procurement; request for proposals and so on. If the DND started looking for their next fighter jet "by the book" what would that have resulted in? Bids from Russian and Chinese firms that we would never buy from in the first place? Bids from European suppliers that would greatly lengthen the supply and support chain? Realistically, what other options are there besides the F-35? We need to have a 5th generation airplane, and we need to replace our aging fleet. They will cost what they cost, we have already invested in their development, and we should provide our pilots with the best available equipment that is easily integrated with our neighbors to the south.
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The government screwed up and should have just come out and said in the first place that there were to be no other options on the table but they didn't have the balls to do that and go against the federal mandates about going back to market and getting fair competition for everything so they wiggled their way in and out (changing the numbers, avoiding direct answers, being found in contempt, etc.) and that's where all this controversy comes from.
They should have just said from the beginning that we were going to buy these at whatever price they ended up as as we have already committed a sizable investment into development and built up the Canadian aerospace industry to be integrated with the development and support of this fighter.
What the Harper government should probably do now is to deflect blame to the Americans to get some heat off of them. If you contract with a company to supply you with something and you commit your budget years in advance and that company suddenly says that the prices are going up, you fight it. Canada should be fighting this with Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Government right now. They should even try to spread this fight out and get our other allies (many Western powers have bought into the F-35 program) to also complain about skyrocketing costs. Pressure the U.S. Government and let them deal with it if they want to maintain goodwill with their allies, continue selling us their expensive weapons, etc.