Harper invented the “future appointments” system as a way of governing for years beyond his mandate, tying the new government’s hands on the leadership of agencies like the National Energy Board. He and ministers like Lisa Raitt did it by “filling the pipeline” with Tory candidates for posts long before their existing appointments ran out.
Canadians also found out that Harper had transferred huge swaths of federally-owned pasture lands to the provinces — without the mandatory strategic environmental assessments put in place by former prime minister Brian Mulroney.
Then there were the specifics of all those cuts Harper made — and willfully concealed from the Parliamentary Budget Officer and, therefore, from Parliament. Treasury Board President Scott Brison published the formerly anonymous cuts.
One of them was particularly hypocritical. Despite all the florid protestations of support for the Canadian Armed Forces, the former PM was secretly pulling the rug out from under the military — exactly as he had done with veterans. In 2012, Harper cut $1.19 billion from DND’s budget. The current Liberal Defence Minister, Harjit Sajjan, shrugged and said, “What’s done is done.”
And now there is the ugliest zombie of them all — the F-35.
There was almost nothing the Tories didn’t lie about with respect to the so-called “stealth” fighter-jet, a huge hardware acquisition which they pursued under a “sole-source” process. It was, to say the least, poor husbandry. Procurement experts like Alan Williams say that the absence of a competitive bidding process adds at least 20 per cent to the cost of any acquisition, fighters included.
The Harper government told Parliament there was a “contract”, when there was no such contract to buy 65 of these flying pianos. Harper also said the project was proceeding well, when in fact it was stuck like a sabre-toothed tiger in a tar-pit of worst practices from a military procurement perspective. Here, after all, was an experimental fighter jet that went into production before it was flight-tested. That’s great for Lockheed Martin’s retrofit business, but very, very bad for the people who have to foot the bill.
Finally, Harper claimed the price tag for the Canadian public would be $15 billion, when it was clear to everyone — especially the Harper government — that it would be at least double that price, likely even more. (Today, the cost for the jets is estimated at closer to $45 billion.)
Harper and his cabinet knew that their F-35 price-tag was woefully misleading, but that didn’t stop them from issuing their phoney numbers to Canadians both during and after the 2011 federal election.
Strangest of all? Under Harper, the decision to buy the F-35 was made four years before the Statement of Requirements was even issued for a new fighter jet for Canada. The fix, ladies and gentlemen, was in.
No wonder the F-35 became an election issue in 2015. Just a month before Justin Trudeau won the election that made him prime minister of a Liberal majority government, he told an audience of 800 at Pier 21 in Halifax that his government would kill the F-35 purchase. Instead, it would buy a cheaper fighter to replace Canada’s aging F-18s, and use the “savings” to expedite the national shipbuilding program for the Canadian Navy.
So at least one zombie seemed to have been blown away by Trudeau’s unequivocal declaration on the public record. But not so. In late December, 2015 Trudeau’s defence minister refused to rule out including the F-35 in the “open” bidding process the Liberals had promised to create to find the “right” fighter-jet for Canada.
There was an obvious disconnect here, as NDP defence critic Randall Garrison noted. With the PM firmly on the record saying that Canada would cancel the Tory decision to buy the F-35 and withdraw from the JSF program, why would the same aircraft be included in the open bidding process to select a “cheaper” aircraft?
And why would the Trudeau government decide to make a $33 million payment this spring to stay in the JSF consortium when it has already decided against this so-called “fifth generation” F-35?
Harjit Sajjan fueled further speculation about a potentially deadly policy flip-flop on the F-35 at a recent meeting with the Conference of Defence Associations Institute in Ottawa. Once again, the defence minister would not rule out that the F-35 could be part of the “open” bidding process designed to procure new fighter jets for Canada. Paradoxically, he insisted that the new government would keep all its promises made during the recent election campaign with respect to defense procurement.
The Department of Defence offered another, and technically accurate, reason why the Trudeau government was paying its club fees to remain part of the JSF program: to ensure that Canadian companies, which have already won more than $700 million in contracts associated with the F-35, will remain in the running for future contracts.
The reality check? That logic will only apply until the Trudeau government actually chooses a replacement for Canada’s fleet of CF-18s. If that choice is not the F-35, all bets will be off on future contracts, whether Canada is still a member in good standing of the consortium or not. Here is what Lockheed Martin’s executive vice-president had to say on that subject:
“If in fact the Canadian government were to decide not to select the F-35, we will certainly honour the contracts that we have here with the Canadian industry,” Orlando Carvalho told reporters in Montreal. “But our approach in the future would be to try and do business with the industries that are in countries that are buying the plane.”
I suspect what is really going on here is that the Liberals have realized that they can’t exclude the F-35 from the “open” bidding process promised by the new government. So their problem is how to dump the F-35 without appearing to do so. That way, both Trudeau’s campaign pledge, and the avoidance of a possible massive lawsuit, might be achieved.
That will probably be done by allowing Lockheed Martin to bid on the replacement for the CF-18 and by re-writing the Statement of Requirements for Canada’s new jet fighters in such a way that would effectively exclude the F-35. How could that be done? If protecting Canadian airspace in the Arctic, for example, were given a higher priority, the F-35s “stealth” capacity would become less important, and its single engine a real disadvantage over twin-engine jets.
So far, the Liberal record on keeping the faith with voters who wanted to see Harper’s dismal and destructive policy choices undone has been pretty good.
The new government has moved to repeal Bill C-24 so that no one will be stripped of their citizenship; it has dropped the Harper government’s appeal of the Federal Appeal Court’s decision which threw out the banning of the niqab; the infamous police-state anti-terror bill, C-51 is being revised with a view to making it Charter-compliant; the long-form census will be restored, as will medical aid to refugees. And the Trudeau government kept its promise to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada in a very short period of time.
The one thing the new government can’t do on the F-35 file is cave in to pressure from Lockheed Martin, perhaps through the threat of a Chapter 11 challenge under NAFTA, with the result that Canada ends up with the F-35 as the replacement jet for the CF-18. To do that would be to confirm suspicions raised by Trudeau’s refusal to kill the $15-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia: in such matters, money talks and principles walk.
There is no place for Harper zombies in the new order.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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