A committee of Cabinet will be presented with information that is being gathered in the review, including aircraft capabilities and their ability to meet Canada’s requirements under the missions outlined in a defence strategy the government established five years ago, as well as cost and industrial benefits for Canada, but the senior officials presenting the information will provide Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and his Cabinet with no advice or any recommendations about which aircraft to choose, one of the senior officials supervising the review told a media briefing last Friday.
“We’re not going to make a recommendation of a particular solution, what we’re going to present are the options available, the choices will have to be made about what option to pursue, that’s not what our role is, our role really is to put all the options out on the table,” the official said at the briefing, which the Public Works and Government Services Department arranged on condition that the four officials would not be identified.
“We are going to present to the government the options that it can consider for moving forward on the replacement of the CF-18 fleet,” the official said. “We will not be recommending a particular aircraft. We’re recommending options is what we’re doing, so how the government wants to proceed is a discussion that they will have.”
The plan to leave the final decision to Cabinet without advice from the public service on the controversial acquisition—estimated to incur costs of $44-billion over 30 years, including purchase price, sustainment, operations, replacement aircraft due to attrition and new weapons systems—surprised opposition MPs.
The opposition and other critics have accused the government of using the options analysis review as a delaying tactic to divert attention after an uproar over a report from Auditor General Michael Ferguson on the trouble-plagued F-35 project released last year.
Liberal and NDP MPs told The Hill Times on Tuesday the plan to leave the final choices up to a secret meeting of Cabinet further reinforces skepticism about the sincerity of the government’s statement that it is considering other choices, particularly in light of the fact that the F-35 is included in the review, which was considering four other planes until the Swedish fighter plane manufacturer, Saab, withdrew from the options analysis last month.
The Harper Cabinet has until mid-2014 to make a decision on the F-35 fighter jets, either to sign an initial contract for the first batch of four of the stealth fighters for delivery to Canada in 2017, or to delay it or drop the plan entirely.
“That basically leaves it to a secret discussion by people who are not going to report to anybody, except what they think the answer is,” said NDP MP Jack Harris (St. John’s East, Nfld.). “That’s abdication of any notion of accountability to the cabinet, essentially, without a recommendation as to what’s going on.”
“The problem here is, and the other players have identified this, this is not a real competition,” Mr. Harris said.
“We’re going to this trouble of asking these people for all of this information, they want to really engage in the process of competition, of tendering, and that’s what Canadians need,” he said.
“It sort of looks almost like they’re setting it to be almost like they’re setting up to be like the whitewash committee of a Senate office,” said Liberal House Leader Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour, N.B.). “If experts who presumably have got the best, the most competent people to evaluate this, I’m not sure elected politicians are in the position to evaluate the different strengths of fighter aircraft.”
“I have never doubted that the government has decided from the very beginning to create a process that leads to only one outcome, the F-35. This is sort of a sanitized, phony way to arrive at the same bad decision that they arrived at two years ago,” Mr. LeBlanc said.
Liberal MP John McKay (Scarborough-Guildwood, Ont.) said if Cabinet makes the decision without advice or recommendations from the secretariat, including findings from CF-18 pilots who will be ranking the capabilities of the aircraft being reviewed, it means the decision will be charged with political considerations.
“It has to be a political decision, because they have no qualifications otherwise,” said Mr. McKay. “None of these people have any military experience.”
The Public Works official was asked several times to confirm that no advice on the selection will be given to Cabinet.
“That’s right, there will be the options presented for consideration,” he said.
“The terms of reference are pretty clear on this; we are to present this to ministers of the government. I can’t say which ministers, it will be a Cabinet committee probably, but that remains to be concluded. I don’t have direction on that,” the official said.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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