Will the purchase of new fighter jets once again be an election issue?

Three transnational corporations – Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Saab – are currently bidding for a $19 billion contract to sell 88 fighter jets to Canada.

While “government evaluators are now busily assessing” their proposals, political considerations will also likely be part of the calculus of the final decision.

This story begins more than a decade ago.

In July 2010, the Conservative government announced that Canada would be buying 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets for $9 billion.

By April 2012, a report by Auditor General Michael Ferguson found that the Department of National Defence (DND) did not exercise due diligence in its choice of the fighter jet and that it was not forthcoming about the true estimated cost of the purchase.

The Auditor General’s report showed that DND had internal estimates that 65 F-35s would cost $25 billion over 20 years but would only admit to $14.7 billion.

The purchase was soon suspended.

And while Defence Minister Jason Kenney was promising to fix the procurement process, the Harper government continued to support the choice of the F-35.

In contrast, Justin Trudeau vowed that a Liberal government would scrap the Conservative plan to buy F-35s and then launch an “open and transparent competition” to buy more affordable airplanes to replace the current fleet of CF-18 fighter jets.

Trudeau even promised to exclude the F-35 from that new bidding process.

And yet, the F-35 has long been the choice of the Canadian military.

The CBC has reported: “The military signed three MOUs with the U.S. in 1997, 2002 and 2006 committing Canada in some measure to the new F-35 fighter jets, but had not enlisted Public Works, which vets federal procurements.”

Despite the military’s preference, the election platform for the Liberals in 2015 stated in bold: “We will not buy the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber.”

Their Real Change platform further noted: “We will reduce the procurement budget for replacing the CF-18s, and will instead purchase one of the many, lower-priced options that better match Canada’s defence needs.”

This suggests a dynamic in which the Canadian military has favoured the F-35, while the Liberal government having cancelled the Conservative purchase five years ago could be reluctant to be seen choosing the aircraft it had once promised to exclude.

Speculation continues that the Liberal minority government will call an election to be held this fall, with the Canadian Press reporting: “Liberal insiders suggest that could happen during the summer, provided the vaccine rollout is going smoothly and the pandemic, currently spreading like wildfire once again, is brought back under control.”

An additional consideration is that the Government of Canada’s timeline for the purchase of new planes notes that “the initial evaluation of proposals is anticipated to be completed by spring 2021” and further promises to award the contract in 2022.

And while the Auditor General’s report saying the fighter jets would cost $25 billion was a political bombshell in 2012, it has now been estimated that the life-cycle cost of 88 new fighter jets could be $76.8 billion.

There are also, of course, questions about how $76.8 billion could be better spent on social needs, the use of warplanes in Canada’s military alliances, the stationing of these planes on stolen Indigenous lands in this country, the morality of bombing other countries, and if the use of violence can build a genuine peace.

With the signing of a contract on the horizon and the absence of a new report from either the Auditor General or Parliamentary Budget Officer on the true cost of new fighter jets, warplanes could once again be an election issue.