The auditor general’s scathing report on the shambles that is the proposed $9-billion F-35 jet fighter program is just the latest and most pointed of DND’s troubles. It has forced the Conservative government back on its heels for its all-out support for an expensive project that the military brass seems ill-equipped to manage.
Finally awake to the problems with the F-35, the Harper government has put the Department of Public Works in charge and promises to do a better job reporting to Parliament.
But it’s not just jets. The shambolic submarine program, now in its 12th year of rust, repair and reconstruction and still incomplete, should have raised alarms long ago.
A department spending billions on equipment hasn’t shown a lot of accountability so far.
It’s a fair question: If the military can’t manage the F-35 contract and can’t keep subs in the water, how confident should we be that federal authorities will be able to manage $25-billion worth of ship contracts?
The new auditor general, Michael Ferguson, slammed DND brass for poor due diligence investigating whether the F-35 is the right plane at the right price. He criticized its approvals and documentation practices, adding pointedly that DND "was too involved with the aircraft and the JSF (joint strike fighter) program to run a fair competition."
The department was sold on the Lockheed-Martin plane and didn’t consider any alternative. Then it intentionally misled Parliament about costs.
Think about that: Our military leadership lied to the government and our elected representatives.
It vastly underestimated the costs, telling Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page that the 65 planes would cost $14.7 billion when it knew the estimate was closer to $25 billion.
That was a flat lie from the military leadership that left its Conservative defenders reeling after six years of devout support for the program.
And this is a Harper government problem: Ottawa decided in late 2006 that the F-35 was the only option.
For six years, the generals and admirals allowed their supporters within government to blithely go about defending the F-35 and dismissing all skepticism as political posturing bordering on treason. Turns out, the brass was doing the posturing.
That left the defence minister, Peter MacKay, swinging in the wind. It’s hard to say how much effort he put into finding out what was really going on. But the generals have a constitutional obligation to keep the political level informed.
By now, the government should be conducting an all-out investigation of who made what claim to whom. Is that investigation happening? Done right, a vigorous investigation will likely lead some high-ranking officers to start considering life after the military.
And if the senior brass was so comfortable misleading Canadians about fighter jets, how should we regard their claims about the submarines?
So far, almost $3 billion has been spent, to far-too-little result. The four Victoria-class subs have been at sea about 20 per cent of the time since they were purchased in 1998 and the program appears to be eight years off schedule.
All along, the military claimed the subs were essential to Canada’s national defence and that the problems were all minor.
The mishandling of these two expensive and important files raises questions about how well our military has been led. The public deserves to know who knew what, when they knew it and how the decisions were made.
Finally, the navy is building $25-billion worth of surface ships and a lot depends on that program going well. It appears to be running smoothly so far, but how will we really know, absent better visibility about what’s going on at DND HQ?
When it comes to acquisitions, get the generals out and the experts in. There’s too much at stake to do otherwise.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: DAN LEGER
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