Matt Gurney: Canada’s aging fighter jets will keep on aging because Trudeau has no incentive to replace them – National Post

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This may be an impossible problem to solve, but it's an easy one to diagnose

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My colleague David Pugliese reported in the Ottawa Citizen this week that the seemingly never-ending effort to replace our fighter jet fleet has run into yet another delay, marking just the latest low point in our appalling efforts to procure military equipment, of which much is needed. The government was supposed to have selected finalists among the would-be providers of our next generation jet this month, with the selection of a final winner scheduled for early next year. The government no longer says it is committed to that timeline. Its hard to imagine that that means anything else than yet more delays, which is typical of a pattern of deliveries not matching announcements flashy press releases have promised more Rangers with modern weapons, reconnaissance drones, Arctic patrol ships for the Navy, and eventually, new fighter planes to replace the aging CF-18s. Its a long-running problem.

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How long running, you might ask? Well, long running enough that in the paragraph above, everything from flashy to aging CF-18s was plucked verbatim out of a column from 2009, written by yours truly in this very same newspaper.

As is the way of things, those aging jets have kept right on aging. There has been some progress. During these last 12 years, we were able to get new bolt action rifles for the Rangers, and one of the Arctic patrol ships is now in service. That concludes the good news.

The only thing that has really changed during that time is that now we have Liberals in power instead of Conservatives, and our elderly CF-18s are even more elderly. If anything, the geopolitical situation around the world has only gotten worse as our jets have gotten older. Canada now routinely sends jets to Europe to assist eastern European NATO allies patrol their skies. A Canadian warship recently joined other allied vessels in a show of strength near Taiwan, which is in Beijings crosshairs. Our alliance with the United States, long our guarantor of protection from external threat, has been through incredible strains these last few years. We simply cannot take for granted that they would defend us in a way that generations of Canadian policymakers had comfortably, if perhaps wrongly, assumed.

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This may be an impossible problem to solve, but its an easy one to diagnose: both Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau have publicly recognized the necessity of replacing the CF-18s; both of them have privately clearly paled at the tens of billions of dollars it will cost to do so. This has been an urgent priority for 20 years. There is simply no incentive for someone to step up, take the reins and fix this problem. And theres always something more politically sexy to spend the money on.

So our pilots take off every day in planes that are at risk of honest-to-God metal fatigue failure if they have to fly too fast or turn sharply. Flying fast and turning sharply, as the reader may know, is the sort of thing that fighter jets could conceivably need to do in the middle of, you know, a mission or something.

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Today its the jets, tomorrow it will be something else. Maybe we will try and fail again to replace our 9mm pistols, which were built when Hitlers panzers roamed France. Maybe our plan to replace our navy surface warships will run into some other program-threatening delay or budget overrun. And God help us all, but were gonna need to get going on a submarine replacement sooner rather than later, and if we do an exceptionally good job at it, perhaps my great grandchildren will one day be writing columns in the Planetary Post noting the ongoing delays in delivery.

Conservatives will blame Trudeau for the latest CF-18 delay, and fairly so. He is the guy in the big chair. Hes the boss. Weve had a few elections of late and Trudeaus party keeps winning them. Theres nothing wrong with saying the buck stops with him, because, frankly, it does. Liberals, of course, for their part will note that the Conservatives also dropped the ball on this file and left Trudeau, way back in 2015, not only with a few dozen ancient fighter jets but also a navy that had rusted out. Those Liberals, right as they are, will shift uncomfortably in their seats when its pointed out that theyve been in office for six years since, and as noted above, not much has gotten better.

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And it wont. It just wont. This is not a political problem. Its easy to blame Liberals, or Conservatives, or politicians generally, but at this point that is a cop out. This ones on us. This is a Canadian problem. We are bad at this because we do not value it. If we valued it, the government would at least attempt to meet the demand for better. Canadian government competency is something no one has ever gone bust betting against, but we arent even trying. The man who was until very recently the minister of national defence couldnt even seem to get on top of the militarys HR problems, amid the unfolding backdrop of the sexual misconduct omnishambles at the top of the Forces command structure. But sure, this government will get right on replacing many tens of billions of dollars of equipment.

Anyway, what more can be said? Lets check back in another 12 years. Perhaps by then well be flying new jets. But then again, maybe not.

National Post Twitter.com/MattGurney

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Matt Gurney: Canada's aging fighter jets will keep on aging because Trudeau has no incentive to replace them - National Post