EITS, I too wish our next PM well, but I too am concerned about the remaining concentration of 'old school' liberals within the PM's sphere of influence. Half a billion dollars to cancel the EH-101, a billion for AdScam, a billion for the long gun registry, a billion for Ontario liberals' cancelation of the gas-fired power plant, the mysterious unknown "fourth investor" in the golf course... Some will counter that the amount doesn't matter and that Duffy's $90k is just as bad morally (conveniently ignoring Mac Harb's millions, of course)...perhaps morally so, but $3-4B takes a chunk out of Joe and Jane Canada's pockets in a real, impactful way. I won't be directly impacted when the F-35 is cancelled, but I feel for those in the Canadian aerospace industry currently enjoying well-paying employment from the $637M of current JSF-related contracts who will lose their jobs when the contracts aren't renewed and the companies that employ them are not permitted to bid on the follow-on estimated $10-11B of future JSF contracts Industry Canada assesses as likely should Canada purchase the F-35. So e people say it is easy to re-assign contracts to aerospace industries from other vendors, however that is a bit of a facile view. JSF industrial participation had been crafted over an eighth of a century, since 2002, when the. DND Associate Deputy Minister (Materiel), Alan Williams, signed the first industrial participation MOU in Washington. Anything cobbled together in months cannot possibly have the integration and infusion that JSF had. At least on the plus side, we're talking industrial technological benefits (ITBs), not 'offsets', so we shouldn't end up with new restaurant chains hiring serving staff in return for buying jets made in country XXX - entirely I relate to aerospace. Don't laugh, part of the offset package that Mcdonnell Douglas provide included a new seafood restaurant chain being introduced into Canada...Red Lobster...yup, welcome CF-188 and those yummy buttery biscuits served before your Captain's Shrimp Platter arrives. :nod:
My indirect costs will be the same as those that will be borne by other Canadians as well, and unavoidable at this point. Opportunity cost, both in money (look at how much we are paying for CH-148 Cyclone now, than had we continued with the EH-101 back in 1993. Chretien's hubris cost both in the short-term and later, not to mention the delays to replacing the Sea King. People look to JSF and say it's a program that has taken too long...they either conveniently forget, or truly don't appreciate that Eurofighter Typhoon was originally called EFA2000, or European Fighter Aircraft (to be operational in) 2000...missed that target date by about a tenth of a century. For what it's worth, I think history will bear out that Canada was run in a fighter race and, a few meters from the finish line, pulled aside and returned to the starting line wih a different runner...it doesn't matter how fast that runner is, they won't finish the race faster than the first runner, unless the race course is significantly shortened.
I've said before that I don't have a dog in the fight re: F-35, and that's entirely true operationally. Can we put in place a NORAD/Fortress Canada compliant solution? Probably. Will it be able to endure the way that the CF-18 will (hopefully) endure? Not sure, but we are likely to see the CF-18 undergo some of the same strain as the Sea King and Buffalo, being drawn out significantly past the originally intended lifetime of the aircraft.
:2c:
G2G
