National Post (National Edition)
Ottawa’s fighter jet RFP favours F-35, critics charge
CANADIAN FORCES
The federal government has issued a request for bids for new Canadian Forces jets, even as some industry officials continue to raise concerns the process is tilted to favour the F-35 stealth fighter.
The request for proposals for the $19-billion project went to aerospace firms on Tuesday. Eighty-eight aircraft will be purchased to replace the current fleet of CF-18s operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force.
At this point four aircraft are to be considered. Those include two U.S.-built aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-35 and the Boeing Super Hornet, and two European planes, Airbus’s Eurofighter Typhoon and Saab’s Gripen.
Bids must be submitted by the spring of 2020, said Andre Fillion, Public Services and Procurement Canada’s assistant deputy minister of defence and marine procurement.
“We’ve established conditions that we believe allow all eligible suppliers to provide bids and compete to win,” he said Tuesday.
But concerns have been raised by Lockheed Martin’s rivals that the competition has been designed to favour the F-35. Postmedia reported earlier this year that the requirements for the new jets put emphasis on strategic attack and striking at ground targets during foreign missions. That criteria is seen to benefit the F-35. In addition, the federal government changed criteria on how it would assess industrial benefits after the U.S. government threatened to pull the F-35 from the competition.
Industry representatives have said they will carefully review the Canadian requirements before making their decision to bid. The work needed to prepare a bid will cost the firms around $15 million each.
Pat Finn, the Department of National Defence’s procurement chief, said Tuesday there is always a risk that some companies will drop out of the competition, but extra efforts have been made to ensure the process is fair. “We’re not getting all kinds of signals that (companies are) losing interest” in bidding, Finn said.
A winning bid is expected to be determined by early 2022. The first aircraft would be delivered by 2025.
Technical merit will make up the bulk of the assessment at 60 per cent. Cost and economic benefits companies can provide to Canada will each be worth 20 per cent.
The previous Conservative government had selected the F-35 as the air force’s new jet, but backed away from that plan after concerns about the technology and growing cost.
During the 2015 election campaign, Justin Trudeau vowed that his government would not purchase the F-35. But at the same time, Trudeau stated his government would hold an open competition for the fighter purchase.
The Liberal government backed away from its promise to freeze out the F-35 and the aircraft is now seen as a front-runner in the competition as it has many supporters in the RCAF. Many of Canada’s allies plan to operate the plane.
Canada is a partner in the F-35 program and has contributed funding for the aircraft’s development. Canada already changed some of the industrial benefits criteria of its fighter jet competition in May to satisfy concerns from the U.S. government that the F-35 would be penalized or couldn’t be considered because of how that program was set up.
U.S. officials had warned that the F-35 development agreement Canada signed years ago prohibits partners from imposing requirements for industrial benefits. Under the F-35 agreement, partner nations such as Canada are prohibited from demanding domestic companies receive specific work on the fighter jet. Instead, Canadian firms compete and if they are good enough they receive contracts. Over the last 12 years, Canadian firms have earned more than $1.3 billion in contracts to build F-35 parts.
The changes made in May would now allow some of those F-35 contracts to be considered when looking at industrial benefits for the new planes.