Our military procurement hits a new low

Canada is a country blessed — or, make that cursed — with a long history of utterly catastrophic military procurement failures. The multi-decade Sea King helicopter replacement escapade springs immediately to mind (and it will endure for at least a few weeks longer before the last Sea King is retired). As does the disastrous purchase of rusted-out British submarines to replace Canada’s elderly sub-surface fleet; only in recent years has that 1990s-era procurement actually begun producing functioning warships. The pathetic end of service for our last two supply ships, retired without replacement because they were simply unsafe to operate any longer at their advanced age, must surely also make the list.

But even against that history of spectacular disgrace, the Liberal government’s handling of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s CF-18 fighter jet replacement still stands out as an especially shameful display. Although it’s too soon to say for certain, future historians may well come to regard this slow-motion train wreck as the defining Canadian military procurement embarrassment.

It’s a bold claim, but the signs are pointing in that direction. Incompetence is now layered atop mismanagement to such an extent that it’s almost breathtaking to behold.

The core problem is easy enough to grasp: Canada’s fleet of CF-18 jets is approaching 40 years of age, double its intended service life. The basic design is a few years older than that. The jets have been well maintained and periodically upgraded, and remain effective weapons. But there is only so much life that can be squeezed from such a highperformance machine before it simply becomes dangerous to expect any more from them. There is a real risk that they could actually start falling apart, even in mid-air, if pushed much longer and harder than they have been already. The only solution is new jets, and those jets will cost a lot of money, something no Canadian politician has much appetite for. But there is no way around this. And considering the long delivery time for such aircraft, the clock is very much ticking.

As it has been for years. Part of this debacle is bipartisan: the urgency of replacing the CF-18s was as clear to the Harper Tories during their tenure as it is today. They didn’t get the job done, and that’s to their shame.

But that failure has now been compounded and outdone by astonishing levels of Liberal government mismanagement. This is a crisis.

The Liberal failures stemmed from their absurd campaign promise during the 2015 election to proceed with a fighter replacement process that was fair and transparent, but which also excluded the Conservatives’ preferred Lockheed Martin F-35, an advanced American stealth jet now entering service with several allied nations.

It was instantly obvious that the Liberal proposal was inherently contradictory: you can’t hold a fair competition while excluding a clear front-runner. Trapped from the outset, the Liberals have been trying to find a way out ever since.

They been forced to concoct an irrational fiction to provide themselves political cover: they claim that the CF-18 jet fleet has dwindled in number to such an extent that Canada can no longer meet its dual primary obligations: to North American defence in partnership with the United States, via Norad, and our obligations to assist our NATO allies abroad. It’s true that the fleet is too small, but that’s all the more reason to replace it, all of it, without further delay.

Since the Liberals can’t do that thanks to their own silly promise, they’re trying to delay making that decision by spending billions not only to keep the CF-18s flying longer, but also by buying used Boeing F-18s from Australia, a similar model. This, the Liberals say, will add some bulk back to the Royal Canadian Air Force’s squadrons.

So, Canada will spend billions to augment a fleet that is already becoming obsolete, to avoid spending billions on replacing that augmented fleet just a few years later. And all of this misspending just to get the Liberals out of a political pickle of their own making. The government is manifestly putting its own partisan interests ahead of the national interest and the safety of our pilots. They’re barely even trying to hide it.

But as if the above wasn’t bonkers enough, a report by auditor general Michael Ferguson this week revealed that, due to chronic underfunding and mismanagement, the RCAF no longer has enough pilots or ground technicians to keep our existing fleet of CF-18s in the sky. Our fleet is too small to meet Canada’s needs and yet we cannot even properly use the small fleet we have for want of pilots and technicians.

But wait. There’s more. To add one final ridiculous insult to this farcical injury, since the Australian hand-me-downs will require work to get into service with Canadian squadrons, by adding new jets to the fleet, the technician and pilot shortage will actually be made worse than it already is.

What can possibly be said of this utter fiasco? What could be more damning, more embarrassing for Canada and its government, than these uncontested facts above?

Rhetorical flourishes here cannot hope to match the impact of the sobering reality. Our air arm has been allowed to wither to the point where it’s going to be almost impossible to rebuild it. We can’t buy new planes, we can’t sustain the ones we have and we can’t absorb the used Australian planes, or train the staff that would make that possible.

The only thing we do have, arguably, is a new humiliation in Canadian military procurement history — the one thing Canadian forces already had in abundance.

WHAT CAN POSSIBLY BE SAID OF THIS UTTER FIASCO?