Solution to F-35 mess: Conservatives must eat crow
Faced with a KPMG audit showing the proposed 65-aircraft F-35 purchase would have cost taxpayers upwards of $30 billion (according to some reports as much as $40 billion), over a 36-year span, the government had no option but to reboot, sources familiar with the decision say. “Can you imagine now taking an additional $23 billion out of the defence budget over the next 30 years?” asked one. “You would simply have an air force. That would be the Canadian military. You would have nothing else.”
On tap now is a competition among at least five aircraft, including Dassault’s Rafale, Boeing’s Super Hornet, Saab’s Gripen, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and Lockheed-Martin’s F-35, to replace Canada’s aging CF-18s. Industry players have quietly been led to expect this will flow from the current “options analysis” underway in Ottawa.
At a cabinet committee meeting Tuesday, sources familiar with the discussion say, it was decided that the F-35 as a sole-source program could not go ahead, given the contents of the KPMG report. What remained unclear was a strategy for selling the reversal to Canadians, and for dealing with the fallout — including the potential impact on the Canadian aerospace firms and allies in the F-35 consortium.
The KPMG audit is to be released next week. The F-35 dominated Question Period on Friday, with opposition MPs calling on Defence Minister Peter MacKay to resign.
Read more: http://www.canada.com/Solution+mess+Conservatives+must+crow/7668691/story.html