kEiThZ
Superstar
If only. It has never been this way. Under either party. Despite what they claim. Politicians just can't resist looking at such a large pot of money and angling to get some benefit to their riding. But because we're a large country with a less skilled (on high tech manufacturing at least) workforce, we end up with lots of crap work distributed throughout the country. Contractors have literally bought mennonite furniture from Manitoba to meet offset requirements.
What's particularly bothersome in this particular case is the uncanny parallels to the EH-101. Then too, a PM ignored all technical and expert advise and simply decided he had to cancel a procurement because it was a campaign promise. Canada lost a manufacturing line for the EH-101 that did substantial damage to our aerospace sector. The military lost a timely replacement and substantial capability. It's so bad that the S-92s inducted into service still don't have the capabilities that the EH-101 cancelled by Chretien 25 years ago had. And the S-92s ended up costing more than the original EH-101s. I like Chretien but that was an absolutely terrible decision. And now we're repeating the same mistake with the F-35.
Politicians see an easy target. A mostly ignorant public can be drip fed select stories to feed their narrative. And by law, military and public servants can't counter the narrative publicly. It all worked until the Liberals got elected and probably learned that lifecycle costs for the F-35 are lower than jets in the same class. They also learned that American anger at Canadian antics didn't change with administrations. And that our aerospace sector wasn't interested in a few years of low skilled assembly work while losing out on 30 years of high skilled niche development. But they made a promise so they decided to try and muddle through anyway.... Everyone in a blue uniform is getting flashbacks of Chretien and the EH-101 right now.
