Esprit de Corps

Written By Scott Taylor

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Last week’s release of the much anticipated Auditor General’s report on the acquisition of F-35 fighter planes sparked a furious barrage of media and opposition party outrage. The word “boondoggle” was revived and, while interim Liberal leader Bob Rae called for Prime Minister Harper’s resignation, others demanded that Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Chief of Defence Staff Walt Natynczyk be removed from their posts.

In his report, Auditor General John Ferguson aimed his sights on DND bureaucrats for allegedly misleading their masters. The office reviewed briefing material from 2006 and 2010, concluding that “neither the Minister nor decision makers in National Defence and central agencies were kept informed of these problems and the associated risks of relying on the F-35 to replace the CF-18.”

While a quick glance at this statement would appear to exonerate DND senior managers and top politicians, it is the dates in question that beg closer scrutiny.

It was in July 2010 that Peter MacKay staged a photo-op with a full-scale model of an F-35 and pledged Canada’s commitment to purchasing 65 of these fifth-generation, stealth fighter-bombers from US firm Lockheed Martin. Until that juncture, any discussion of replacing the recently upgraded fleet of CF-18s was limited to trade journals, and certainly the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program was not a regular topic of discussion at the water cooler. Of course all that changed the minute MacKay announced the price tag of the F-35 acquisition: $9 billion for the aircraft and an additional $7 billion on lifetime service support.

The combined total projected cost of $16 billion instantly made the F-35 the largest defence procurement in Canada’s history to date, and subjected the purchase to an intense political and media spotlight. Unfortunately for those committed to the Joint Strike Fighter program, the months following MacKay’s announcement have been rife with setbacks: program delays and missed development milestones have led to escalating costs and deepening concerns among all 11 partner nations.

Of course, the majority of the F-35 media crap-storm of negative stories blew up after the Conservative government announced the purchase and, not coincidentally, after the time frame Ferguson states that the senior managers and politicians were kept in the dark. Given Prime Minister Harper’s well-known penchant to micro-manage all messaging it seems highly unlikely that he would first announce his commitment to such an enormous project, and then wilfully turn a deaf ear to all the alarm bells going off around the world.

In fact, as the controversy began to swirl prior to last year’s election, Harper and MacKay embarked on a coast-to-coast public relations mission to sell the deal to Canadians. To assist them in their efforts, those in the Canadian aviation industry who stand to benefit from the F-35 program were trotted out in front of the media to explain the virtues of high-tech job creation.  Retired air force generals were also dusted off and set to work penning op-ed pieces praising the capabilities of this new fighter technology.

Throughout that entire sales campaign you can bet that Harper and his most senior communications brain-trust were watching every minute detail and development in the ongoing F-35 saga. In other words, even if Ferguson is correct in stating that Defence bureaucrats did not disclose the full list of potential challenges and pitfalls prior to the announced purchase, once committed, Harper and his team would have soon been all too aware of the negative developments.

Yet, during the past two years, the Conservative government steadfastly reassured Canadians at every opportunity that the F-35 project would go forward, no matter what the critics claimed.

That was, of course, up until the internal release of the Auditor General’s initial findings several weeks ago. It was at about that juncture that Harper started to remind reporters that no contract had yet been signed for the F-35s.

This was a far cry from the same jubilant Prime Minister who told aviation workers at the Bristol Aerospace facility last year that “We are buying [the F-35] in a way that gets the best deal for Canada… [The Liberal’s] position here is playing politics with the lives of our men and women in uniform and the jobs of the people in this room, and we will not stand for it.”

This from the same man who flew to Kandahar in 2006 to proclaim that “Canada will not cut and run” from Afghanistan.

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