Even a majority of Conservative Party supporters who are aware of the project favours other options than replacing Canada’s aging CF-18 fighter jets with the sophisticated and costly F-35s, according to a Forum Research poll.
The only place in Canada where support for the project has grown significantly since Auditor General Michael Ferguson released a highly critical report of the F-35 procurement at the beginning of April was Alberta, the survey this week found.
Nationally, only 21 per cent of voting age Canadians who were aware of the plan to buy the stealth fighters said the purchase should go ahead as planned.
Fully 66 per cent of Canadians who are aware of the F-35 acquisition said they believe the government misled Parliament and the Canadian public over the true costs of its purchase and maintenance—a minimum total of $25.1-billion over the next 20 years.
The question of government disclosure has been central to the debate following the report by Mr. Ferguson, who said the Department of National Defence withheld $10-billion worth of maintenance and operating costs when it challenged Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page over his report on the project in March 2011. The deputy minister of National Defence, Rob Fonberg, told the Commons Public Accounts Committee that Cabinet made the decision to make public only $14-billion worth of the costs, and not to release a 20-year price tag for maintenance, personnel and other operating costs that are forecast to be higher per aircraft then the same casts for the CF-18.
Although support for the F-35s has grown among respondents who declared the Conservative Party as their federal party preference, 57 per cent of the Conservative Party supporters preferred other options than the F-35 or didn’t know what the government should do.
The survey conducted on Wednesday, May 23 found a majority of the public at odds with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) government on another key front for the Conservatives—their attack against environmental groups with charitable tax status who have been lobbying against the Enbridge Inc. proposal to build a controversial pipeline to carry oilsands bitumen across Northern British Columbia for shipment to China and other Asian countries.
More than half of those who were surveyed, 51 per cent, said they believe the government should bar foreign oil companies from energy board hearings into the Enbridge plan and only 38 per cent said they believed foreign environmental groups should be barred from the hearings. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton Lawrence, Ont.) has claimed “radical” Canadian environmentalists campaigning against the pipeline are financed by foreign groups that want to intervene.
“The F-35 issue is clearly not going away, and Canadians do not trust the way their government has handled it,” said Forum Research President Lorne Bozinoff. Forum Research included questions about the F-35 and the Northern Gateway Pipeline exclusively for The Hill Times in a wider survey.
“In addition, Canadians may not be in synch with their government’s campaign against foreign-funded environmental groups,” he said.
The government’s controversial omnibus Budget Implementation Act, Bill C-38, gives the Canada Revenue Agency special funding to crack down on charitable groups who advocate on environmental and other issues as part of their work.
The charities are exempt from federal taxation, but their spending on advocacy, which the government terms political, is limited to 10 per cent of their total revenues. The groups must also report foreign donations to the CRA, and the new measures toughen up reporting requirements on the contributions from abroad.
Bill C-38 is currently going through Commons Finance Committee hearings, after the government cut short debate through time allocation in the Commons earlier this month.
The Forum Research survey found support for an open competition to replace Canada’s fighter jet fleet has increased to 36 per cent, compared to 32 per cent a month ago. In Alberta, support has grown to 41 per cent from 27 per cent a month ago.
Only forty-three per cent of Conservative Party supporters said the government should go ahead with the purchase as planned. Fourteen per cent of those who declared the Conservative Party as their current federal preference said the government should purchase another fighter jet. A significant 31 per cent of Conservatives said the government should hold an open competition. Seven per cent of those who declared themselves to be Conservative supporters said the government should do something else with the money, with two per cent saying Canada does not need new fighter jets and two per cent saying they did not know what the government should do.
Support for the F-35 was lowest in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where only 12 per cent of respondents said the government should go ahead with the stealth fighter plan.
The results are based on an interactive voice response telephone survey of 1,836 randomly selected residents of Canada aged 18 or older. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.29 per cent 19 times out of 20.
Of those who were surveyed, 62 per cent were aware of the government’s plan to buy the U.S.-made Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter jet.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
No comments:
Post a Comment