Above all else, F-35 debate poses questions about Canadian defence policy

If and when Canada buys the F-35, its air force will be equipped with new capabilities that could have it fighting very different wars. Some argue that this new reality makes the debate about fighter jets as much about policy as it is about price.

Over at the Ottawa Citizen earlier this week, Eugene Lang, former Finance Canada official and co-founder of progressive think-tank Canada 2020, argued that the F-35 discussion ought to be essentially about capability.

Militaries are often criticized for “fighting the last war,” Lang wrote, and with the F-35 and its stealth capability, Canada seems to be prepared to not allow that to happen. Canada has the ability to be at the “pointy” end of conflicts – ones in which Canada would be on the leading edge, Lang writes.

That next war, the one Canada might need to fight, he says, is unlike any it has fought during the past 60 years.

Lang writes:

    “The F-35 controversy has been reduced to the cost of the planes, the industrial benefits to Canadian industry, aircraft delivery schedules, accounting issues and who knew what and when. But the real issue is much more fundamental than any of that.

    At its root, the decision to acquire the F-35 is a basic matter of Canadian foreign policy. It is about Canada’s role in the world. At an even higher level it is about the values and interests that underpin and inform our foreign policy and role in the world.”

Phil Lagassé, a defence analyst and assistant professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, says the larger difficulty is that by choosing the F-35, the government is “enunciating a policy without really clarifying that this is actually a policy question.”

There is a danger that procurement will dictate policy. Once we have the capability, there’s a tendency to want to use it, Lagassé said.

Buying equipment with the highest capability can be a way for the air force to account for an unknown future. As Lagassé explains, it’s sometimes “better to go for the best possible capability because even if you don’t think you’re going to deploy on a combat operation, you never know what a future government is going to ask you to do.”

That way, the air force can protect itself from “awkward situations” in which political pressure deems a mission necessary despite limited resources.

The notion that the purchase could dictate policy is worrying to Alan Williams, former deputy minister of materiel at the department of national defence and ardent critic of the F-35 procurement process. “Civilian control over the military is a benchmark of a democracy,” he told iPolitics prior to the release of the auditor general’s report.

“Whenever the military starts dictating what we buy and, I have to admit, more importantly, where we fight, we’ve abdicated our responsibilities.”

Elected officials — not the military — should make those decisions, he said.

In the case of the F-35, he says it’s very clear the military wanted the planes when virtually no information was readily available. “The air force said, ‘This is what we want.’ And more importantly in my mind, the civilian authorities rubber-stamped that and told the ministers this is the best aircraft.”

Williams argues that the decision to purchase the F-35 might also affect the other branches of the military.

“I don’t know this for certain, but if I’m in the navy or the army, I’m pretty scared. If this turns out to be the aircraft we buy in the numbers we say we’re going to buy them, and it turns out to cost what we think it’s going to cost, that means for the next 30 years, we’re going to be diverting about 25 per cent of the discretionary capital budget to pay for this,” he said. “Is this the best thing for the military? Absolutely not.”

Lagassé agrees other projects will have to give way. And it’s for this reason, he says, there’s a “conspiracy of silence.” The government doesn’t want to ask the military to properly cost the program because it could upset the public. The military has an incentive to say the capabilities are affordable within a fixed budget because “as long as they can get the government to commit to buying certain things, they hope that eventually, having committed to a project, the government will top up the funding,” Lagassé said.

While both sides have an incentive to downplay the costs, ultimately one of the two things must happen: “You either cut down on the capability or you spend more money,” Legassé said.

So what’s the solution? While some have raised the idea of a new defence white paper, Lagassé expressed doubts the Conservatives are up for the challenge. “It would take a pretty honest government to do that,” he said. “It would take a government that was willing to take some pretty hard hits and make some really difficult decisions.”

The Forces and National Defence would have to agree on what would go into it. Capabilities could be cut and branches of the services could turn on each other for their share of the diminishing pie.

“A new white paper alone is not going to do anything,” Lagassé said. “If it’s not properly costed and unless it actually proposes some very innovative policy changes to ensure that you’re matching means and ends, then what’s the point?”

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Colin Horgan