Liberals’ jet mess is foul and dispiriting

The Liberal government announced this week that a competition will be held to select Canada’s next fighter jet. This has been announced before. It also announced that Canada would procure 18 “interim” jets to augment the existing CF-18 fleet. This is also not new ( although we’re now buying used Australian jets instead of new birds from Boeing, which is in a trade spat with the government darling Bombardier).

Also not new: this is a travesty, and has been obviously so for years. Our military’s need for replacement jets is real and widely recognized. The CF-18s are fine planes but are nearing the end of their useful service lives. As we’ve argued before, we should move ahead with a full process to replace the jets immediately. Instead, the Liberals are proposing a process that will see bids accepted through to 2019, and no actual contract awarded until 2022. Five years from now.

This is genuinely ludicrous. We know the missions we expect to face, the capabilities the planes will require, and how many the government intends to procure (88). We also know who the realistic contenders are — Lockheed- Martin’s F- 35 and Boeing’s F-18 SuperHornet, as well as three European jets — and we’re now well familiar with each one. There is no legitimate reason we can’t select one next year.

Accelerating the purchase would save money. Not just on what we intend to spend for the Australian jets, plus their conversion to Canadian standards, but also on the continuing costs of keeping the aging CF-18s in fighting form. It would also keep our pilots safer, and make our military more effective, both for domestic defence and patrol, and missions abroad in support of our allies. Nothing is served by delay. But delay we will.

One suspects that the government’s real motive is figuring out exactly how many political symbols they can wring out of whomever ends up building the jets. The government added an additional item to the widely understood technical requirements for any winning bidder: not only will the company have to show that its jets will be of net economic benefit to Canada ( an annoying but routine requirement), but all of the company’s other business interests will also have to be to Canada’s benefit.

This is why we can’t have nice things. The Liberals continue to view the military not as an instrument of national defence and tool of state policy, but as a jobscreation program writ large. Getting warriors the tools they need is something to consider, according to this logic, but the real priority is making the decisions that will win the most political points (or lose the fewest).

It will work, in a sense. Suppliers will play along, building in ( and charging for) extras that will let the government pretend its won “investments” in our economy. But it will add time and complexity to an already complicated process that we’re not particularly good at in the first place. It’s transparently political and reminds our troops that they are not as important to the government as giving ministers opportunities to hand out big novelty cheques and cut ribbons when foreign military giants sprinkle a few jobs across Canada in key ridings.

It’s foul and dispiriting. But it’s not surprising, which is the most dispiriting part of all.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS.