Taxpayers pay even more for used-jet deal

Given the long and sad history of failed or botched Canadian military procurement, this week’s report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer was ... not terrible. Certainly, we’ve seen worse. Less-thantotal failure is by Canadian standards actually a decent outcome. So, congratulations, Liberals, on achieving only baseline levels of dysfunction.

The PBO was looking into Canada’s decision to purchase 18 used F-18 jets from Australia. The increasingly elderly CF-18 jets operated by Canada are of the same vintage as those currently being retired by the Australians. Our own fleet has been eroded by attrition since the planes originally entered service in 1983 — you read that right, 36 years ago — and the Liberals decided Canada did not have enough jets available to meet our three primary simultaneous obligations: domestic patrol, continental defence in partnership with the United States, and supporting our allies abroad, if necessary. The 18 used Aussie birds, the government decided, are just what Canada needs to keep our squadrons filled out until 2032, when new jets are expected to arrive in service. The Air Force had estimated the entire project would cost $900 million; the PBO found that it would actually cost as much as $1.15 billion — more than 20 per cent more.

That’s not good, but a Canadian military procurement that only runs a fifth over budget would probably set some kind of efficiency record. Still, parsing the specifics of this procurement misses the main point: if Canada doesn’t have enough fighter jets, instead of buying a few extra old ones, why not just skip to buying lots of new ones?

The obvious answer is cost: A whole new fleet of modern jets would cost a lot more money than 18 old ones. True enough. But we’re going to need to buy the new fleet eventually, and the sooner the better. The billion we’re giving to Australia for old jets is a billion defence dollars that can’t be used to offset the cost of the new ones. And in Canada (especially) defence dollars are precious for their scarcity.

The problem is that the Liberals are still locked in by preposterous conflicting campaign promises during the 2015 election: that they would select Canada’s next fighter jet in a fair and open competition, but that they also would refuse to consider the F-35 jet favoured by the Harper Conservatives. You cannot have a fair and open competition while excluding a leading candidate. The Liberal answer to this selfimposed problem seems to be just punting the final decision off as long as they can. Hence, the purchase of fourdecade-old Australian castoffs ( jets Australia no longer needs because it’s replacing its aging fleet with modern equipment).

It’s a bad plan, and yet, depressingly, a quintessentially Canadian one.