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Government hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

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I have long said that you could fund the CAF to 4 percent of GDP, but we would still lag behind in NATO and be much the same where we are.

It's never the money, it's politics. It's procedures. It's the pork-barreling in our defence spending that makes us a paper tiger in NATO.

My only hope in all of this for the CAF and the GoC, whatever the political stripe that may be, is that it will rouse them out of the "Peace Dividend" slumber. The world has been unstable since 1945. We have used geography, proximity, and association as a Defence Policy ever since. ICBMs don't care how close to the U.S. or how far from Russia/China we are.

Don't give us a dime more, but let us spend money on defence like it matters. The fact we follow the same rules for purchasing a fighter aircraft as we do for buying office furniture for a Service Canada office is disgraceful. Don't treat defense procurement as a stimulus package for Canadian Industry. There I said it.

We spend so much money, time, and effort trying to get that money to stay in Canada; be it by awarding contracts to companies with no capability to produce items without first "retooling" and"developing the production lines", or by hamstringing perfectly competent and competitive bidders by forcing the project to be made in St. Margaret de Poutain de Champignon, QC because the ruling government either lost the seat in the election, or won it with promises.

We spend so much money and staff hours jumping through TBS regulations that are great for other departments, but are terrible for defence procurement. Some items you have to sole source, because there are technologies and capabilities no one else makes. By doing the bid process, you get companies clamoring for a project they can't deliver on, but because they tick the bright boxes on the score sheet....

I truly and honestly belief we need to split from PSPC and legislate that its not beholden to TBS, only to the PBO/PCO. The guiding principles of this new Defence Procurement department should be "Off the shelf, from somewhere else" if there isn't an industry in Canada.

BOOTFORGEN has demonstrated how well we do when we are able to actually get what we need, instead of lining the pockets of a Canadian company that got lucky.

That, but with tanks, fighters, ships, weapons systems....
 
I wouldn’t necessarily credit President Trump with that. Even with a stable America, the world is a lot more dangerous than the West has been willing to admit for a while.

The Axis of Evil is pushing as hard as they can, and the wants and desires of the West need to govern to the NEEDS.
Yet they didn't move on those things until Biden-era levels of US aid to Ukraine were threatened.

Usually when we see a sharp inflection, something relevant that happened just before the inflection has a lot to do with it.
 
GDLS London can be spun up to build whatever we want them to build.
For clarity, "whatever we PAY them to build".

Which would be dependent on GDLS' American parent maintaining the plant in London. One of the goals of Trump's "disruption" is to repatriate (patriate?) manufacturing to within its borders, specific among that, automotive. By tariffs (or even a more robust application of ITAR) the same pressure could be applied to US defense industry to consolidate their manufacturing in the USA.
 
Which would be dependent on GDLS' American parent maintaining the plant in London. One of the goals of Trump's "disruption" is to repatriate (patriate?) manufacturing to within its borders, specific among that, automotive. By tariffs (or even a more robust application of ITAR) the same pressure could be applied to US defense industry to consolidate their manufacturing in the USA.
Especially since we already make Strykers down here with GDLS…
 
Which would be dependent on GDLS' American parent maintaining the plant in London. One of the goals of Trump's "disruption" is to repatriate (patriate?) manufacturing to within its borders, specific among that, automotive. By tariffs (or even a more robust application of ITAR) the same pressure could be applied to US defense industry to consolidate their manufacturing in the USA.
And that is why I asked about it being bought out by us.

Retool the facility to make AFV, tracked - both tanks and IFV as Kevin pointed out - working with the SK's gives us the possibility of K9 and the K2, just need the IFV side of things.

Location would be perfect because of the abundant tool & die expertise from Windsor to the GTA that would be available.
 
Which would be dependent on GDLS' American parent maintaining the plant in London. One of the goals of Trump's "disruption" is to repatriate (patriate?) manufacturing to within its borders, specific among that, automotive. By tariffs (or even a more robust application of ITAR) the same pressure could be applied to US defense industry to consolidate their manufacturing in the USA.

On the other hand


I'm not sure but I think I read some time ago that the actual armour package is designed by Plasan of Israel.
 
And that is why I asked about it being bought out by us.

Retool the facility to make AFV, tracked - both tanks and IFV as Kevin pointed out - working with the SK's gives us the possibility of K9 and the K2, just need the IFV side of things.

Location would be perfect because of the abundant tool & die expertise from Windsor to the GTA that would be available.
Windsor wouldn’t be where I’d put a tracked armored vehicle site.

Montreal near Mirabel, or Saskatoon. Somewhere that has rail, and not near the border…
 
And GDLS also owns MOWAG - couldn't even revert to Grizzlies and Cougars.
The patents on those are long gone, and any IP claims would be impossible to claim given they’ve been all over the world.

Canada has a lot of LAV’s. Missing are Tracked IFV’s, Tracked SPA, Tanks (or missing a decent number at least) ADA systems etc.
 
Windsor wouldn’t be where I’d put a tracked armored vehicle site.

Montreal near Mirabel, or Saskatoon. Somewhere that has rail, and not near the border…
London, not Windsor and spin up the Woolsey barracks.....
 
Windsor wouldn’t be where I’d put a tracked armored vehicle site.

Montreal near Mirabel, or Saskatoon. Somewhere that has rail, and not near the border…
Seem to recall they were doing the up-armouring of the Bison fleet out on the old base in Chatham, NB - myself, a buddy and the Surg Gen received the first ambulance variant on behalf of the CAF there I want to say in 2005 or 6 (all I remember I was interviewed for CTV news and they spelled my name wrong) - not saying the factory doing the work is still there, but it is definitely out of the way, there appears to be a VIA Rail station still in Miramichi...the vehicles can be taken down to Gagetown for testing...NB could use some money...
 
Anyone have Australia on their Bingo card? I certainly did not.

I had an inkling. They have a ton of long range radars. And their work on quantum computing and data processing paired with some radar work is decent. So I was not surprised by this.
 
Nothing. That's what national security exceptions are for. The whole company can be expropriated if necessary. Or they co-operate and build what we want and enjoy their profits. Which is what they will do.
I'm genuinely curious where the authority lies for the State to commandeer a business. The Expropriations Act is for the government to gain possession of "and and immovable real assets" (buildings) for a public good. Ok, so they do that and GDLS takes their toys, plans and tools and goes home, leaving their employees behind; the government doesn't get to "expropriate the company". Who's going to run the factory? National security exceptions are for the government to short-circuit its in-house rules, not end-run the law.

I'm not exactly sure they could even do that under the Emergencies Act but, even if they could, I don't think the conditions exist to satisfy the Act.
 
Who is this federal government of whom they speak? What authority do they have to rewrite the budget?

No department will start new projects during a writ period. But projects that are already up and running, and have allocations will keep running. This was also specifically committed towards in ONSF.
 
Just bring the rail head to the factory. You can't tell me with CN and CP we don't have the talent to quickly build rail logistics
So long as the customer pays. Cost = distance. Most likely it would be a private contractor anyway. I doubt the Class 1s build much industrial trackage these days.
 
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