Bit of a tight rope to walk for any government of any colour.
We're SO tied to the U.S. economy and military that there's no "switch" to cut them off to zero, it takes time (years, not weeks or months) to build up new markets elsewhere (which'll never be able to replace all of the U.S. market), so checking every week saying, "are we there yet?" can become a partisan exercise for either side: "WTF?!?!? Nothing's happening 77 days in!" vs. "Hey, these things take time."
And a lot of critics of the government on trade also seem keen on seeing continued ties with the U.S. and increased defence spending, so how do you balance that against having to look elsewhere for stuff?
Same with any government transition: the same people who attack party x for "why the ever-loving Christ have they not done anything yet after x months in?!?" are often the same people who support party y in the same position, saying "hey, it takes time to learn the ropes for a new PM, especially after z f@!#$%^&*(ed it up as royally as they did beforehand." All in the eye of the beholder ...
I guess I am of simple thought...
The Government of Canada, for all it's very deliberate messaging about prioritizing "Made in Canada" and "Canada First!" - not to mention the very public "Review of the F-35 file!' - apparently needed to buy some armoured high mobility vehicles... (not sure if the purchase here is smaller part of a bigger project to replace the vehicle fleet? Or if these were requested by CANSOF?)
Either way, for all that deliberate messaging about putting Canadian companies first & keeping that money flowing inside of Canada, the government then turns around and seems to sole source from an American company a vehicle that I suspect could have been built by Roshel (or a few other Canadian companies) fairly easily...
...
All the government messaging about looking to other markets to supply our defence needs, reviewing the F-35 contract, approaching Europe to be included in their "Europians Only!" spending spree...
...
Jst to be clear, I don't have any real familiarity with this project and I think the whole "Boycott America!" movement is pretty silly when it comes to military kit. So I'm not opposed to this by any means, and certainly not on those grounds.
$160M for approx 60 vehicles seems steep though, even if that includes instruction manuals & initial train-the-trainer training (say that 10 times fast...) & whatever else is included.
Maybe reasonable, I don't know. But it seems like a steep price tag for the number of vehicles being acquired.
Also, if anybody can clarify, did DoD pull the plug on the JTLV altogether? Or did they just pull the plug on the initial version, but the A2 model is now being produced?
Mods feel free to move this to a more appropriate thread. My apologies. I posted it here initially because I was looking at the bigger picture politically, but definitely the wrong thread for it
cantruck.ca
