According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the plan to buy 18 used Australian jets will cost $1.15B — 20 per cent more than estimated
Given the long and sad history of failed or botched Canadian military procurement, this week’s report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer was … not terrible. Certainly, we’ve seen worse. Less-than-total failure is by Canadian standards actually a decent outcome. So, congratulations, Liberals, on achieving only baseline levels of dysfunction.
The PBO was looking into Canada’s decision to purchase 18 used F-18 jets from Australia. The increasingly elderly CF-18 jets operated by Canada are of the same vintage as those currently being retired by the Australians.
That’s not good, but a Canadian military procurement that only runs a fifth over budget would probably set some kind of efficiency record. Still, parsing the specifics of this procurement misses the main point: if Canada doesn’t have enough fighter jets, instead of buying a few extra old ones, why not just skip to buying lots of new ones?
The obvious answer is cost: A whole new fleet of modern jets would cost a lot more money than 18 old ones. True enough. But we’re going to need to buy the new fleet eventually, and the sooner the better. The billion we’re giving to Australia for old jets is a billion defence dollars that can’t be used to offset the cost of the new ones. And in Canada defence dollars are precious for their scarcity.
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