The first draft of the report on replacing Canada’s fighter jets by new Auditor-General, Michael Ferguson, is said to charge the Department of National Defence with misleading Parliament, according to someone who has read it.
Neither DND nor the Auditor-General’s office would be drawn on the contents of the report ahead of its release on April 3.
But there are signs that the Harper government is already back-tracking on its previously unwavering support for the F-35s. At the Commons defence committee this week, Julian Fantino, the associate defence minister overseeing military procurement, said the government “has not as yet discounted the possibility of backing out of the program.” The F-35 purchase has been plagued with cost overruns and delays that have doubled the cost of each plane, according to some estimates.
Yet DND has been steadfast in its cost estimate of $75-million per plane. This compares to $128-million calculated by the Parliamentary Budget Office. In a report last year, the PBO said it was forced to speculate on how DND arrived at its figure. “Perhaps coincidentally, this figure reflects statements made by Lockheed Martin in 2001,” it concluded, somewhat tongue in cheek. There is, of course, no coincidence. People familiar with the procurement process say the Air Force simply ran with Lockheed Martin’s numbers and did very little due diligence of its own. This lack of legwork is not a new phenomenon. Liberal ministers were said to have been surprised to find out that DND accepted the British military’s statement of quality assurance when Canada bought four second-hand submarines from the Royal Navy. The submarine purchase has been an unmitigated disaster and whole fleet has been out of commission in dry dock for much of the past eight years.
The department has a similarly long-standing predisposition for bamboozling its political masters. Previous Auditor-General reports in 2006 and 2010 have blasted DND for deliberately low-balling costs, in order to get the kit it wants. Two years ago, Sheila Fraser concluded National Defence knew the Chinook heavy lift helicopter it wanted to buy was not an “off the shelf” model, with a relatively low risk of cost and time overruns. Yet the department did not reveal this to Treasury Board when it sought project approval. As a result, the cost of the 15 Chinooks more than doubled to $4.9-billion and the helicopters still have not been delivered.
A similar story accompanied the purchase of 28 maritime helicopters, according to Ms. Fraser, who lamented the gaps in the fullness of information supplied to MPs. “[DND] under-estimated and under-stated the complexity and developmental nature of the helicopters it intended to buy,” she said.
In her press conference, following the release of the 2010 report, Ms. Fraser was asked about the F-35 purchase. “Let’s hope nobody is assessing them as low risk,” she said. Yet, according to the people who have seen the new AG’s report, that appears to have been precisely what has happened. If the final version of the report emerges unchanged, after DND bureaucrats have done their best to sanitize it, the fall-out in Parliament may persuade the government the price of sticking with the F-35 program is no longer worth paying.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: John Ivison
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