Ministers to Update Parliament on Fighter-Jet Replacement

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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The parliament will soon be learning more about the cost and expense of the controversial F-35 stealth fighter jets, along with the key information revealing the considerations taken during the process of selecting the replacements of Canada’s fleet of CF-18s. The update on the government’s “seven-point plan” on the procurement program is scheduled to be briefed on Wednesday afternoon. The Public Works Minister, Rona Ambrose, and Defence Minister, Peter MacKay, are going to discuss the government’s arrangement of replacing fighter jets at 3:15 p.m. ET, that is anticipated to include an audit of the complete life-cycle costs of F-35’s conducted by KPMG. The opposition MP’s are also expected to react to the following ministers’ statement.

It was announced in July 2010, that the Canadian federal government has decided to purchase F-35 fighter jets, without any competitive process, in replacement of the Canada’s maturing fleet of aging CF-18 Hornets. The government posed constantly that these new jets are going to cost a total of $9 billion for a 20-year lifespan, while insisting that the estimated price of each individual plane is almost $75 million. The government’s claims were dismissed by a report of Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who estimated that the F-35s are in fact going to cost almost $30 billion dollars with an estimated lifecycle of 30 years.

This April, the government was moved after the Auditor General, Michael Ferguson, also published a sarcastic report regarding the notorious F-35 project. He alleged that “there were significant weaknesses in the decision-making process used by National Defence in acquiring the F-35 to replace the CF-18.”