The fact of the matter is that most of the public seems to want more discussion about the F-35 procurement program, and there's been an alarming lack of information about it, which is especially disturbing when numerous countries are facing controversy about the F-35. In the USA the F-35 is already a political disaster because of massive cost overruns. It's been called a white elephant in several circles, and the Pentagon, apparently, is trying to get Lockheed Martin to absorb some of the cost overruns rather than passing them on to end users. I'm not sure how well that'll work.
In Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office has already basically called the $16 billion cost estimate a joke, putting their estimate at almost double that ($29.3bn). Further, and most importantly, there's been absolutely no effort to explain to the public why we need this particular aircraft. I understand the efficiency of skipping a competitive process if there's only one aircraft that meets the requirement, but some effort needs to be undertaken to educate the public why that's the case, or the controversy is not going to go away. Why, for example, aren't we looking at (currently in production) Super Hornets? Yeah, not at Gucci as the JSF, but readily available with known costs and capability. I'm not an Air Force type so I don't know what the argument for the JSF/against the Super Hornet (or any other aircraft for that matter) is, and neither do voters.
Oh yeah, and remember that whole "contempt of parliament" thing that brought down the government? (why aren't Liberals capitalizing more on that, by the way?) That was primarily about the F-35 and the government's unwillingness to give the opposition more information about the program.
Haletown said:
Iggy confirmed this morning he plans to take the money allocated currently to DND to procure the F-35 and use it to pay for his student grant program.
Source? Most of his statements indicate that they know a CF-18 replacement's needed, and quickly, they're just not sold on the JSF. I cannot find any reference whatsoever to support your claim, but by all means, prove me wrong.
Haletown said:
So the policy of the Liberal Party of Canada is to to defund the military to the tune of $30 billion. This means that Canada, already one of the lowest spenders on Defense - 1.3% of our GDP, will drop even lower.
Nice hyperbole. The policy is to demand the public's money be used in an efficient manner. They're going to have to replace the Hornets with something - and Ignatieff has said that repeatedly, but for the reasons I've outlined, they seem to feel they need to sell it better to the public. Frankly, spending $30bn on education or healthcare rather than really fancy fighter jets is going to appeal to a lot of voters. Further, since that $30bn (and hey, at least you're using the right numbers, not the cooked up $16bn) is a capital expenditure, I don't think it figures into that metric anyhow.
Haletown said:
The Liberals have played this game before and it resulted in a very dark decade for the CF. No doubt this would be one of many procurement cuts needed to fund Liberal promises of free stuff for Canadians.
It did result in a dark decade, but I think the public mostly understands that know, and I hope that the Liberals do too. Someone like Ignatieff probably does more than most, I'd expect. There's a need to balance the guns/butter tradeoff somehow, and it's only reasonable to expect that the public have as much input as possible into that.
