Feds should adopt new rules for selecting military aircraft
Conservative Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor is a decent man who cares deeply about the Canadian Armed Forces and he has been hitting all the right notes in recent speeches.
His predecessor, Bill Graham, never served a day in uniform. A novice and an outsider in the portfolio.
Graham’s predecessor, John McCallum confused Canada’s greatest military victory, at Vimy Ridge in the First World War, with collaborationist Vichy France in the Second World War. Add to that, McCallum had never heard of Canada’s greatest military defeat, at Dieppe in the Second World War.
Perhaps this is why when it comes to procuring equipment for our men and women in uniform, partisan politics and incompetence have played a role rather than letting experts find the best equipment our military needs to do its job.
Hopefully this is about to change.
O’Connor comes from a different mould than his predecessor: He’s a former brigadier-general who put his life on the line for 33 years in our Armed Forces. A military hero, he is obviously the right man in the right job.
Yet politics being politics, the Grits will take any chance they can get to undermine him and create a big fuss in the media.
Grit critics try to make a big deal that after a long and distinguished career in the military, O’Connor did some consulting work for a number of defence companies.
It apparently doesn’t matter he ended his consulting work when he entered politics in 2004.
It could be argued a bigger conflict is the former boss of the current chief of defence is heading the lobby group pushing to get the Lockheed Martin’s C-130J, the tactical airlift plane, chosen as the replacement for our diminishing fleet of aging Hercules.
But let’s not forget the real problem here. The previous Liberal government, just before the election, put in place a plan to buy replacements for the Hercules that does not allow competition. Worse, it does not allow for any assessment of what our Armed Forces really need or how best to meet those needs.
If we just let things continue the way the Grits designed them, we could end up spending upwards of $5 billion to replace the Hercules with a plane just as limited as the Hercules. In fact, the C-130J has proven to be a controversial purchase by the U.S. air force and has run into a number of operational and purchase-price problems.
We would then have to buy some bigger strategic airlift planes to support our peacekeeping and DART missions abroad.
Using the process now in place, there would again be no competition as only one plane, Boeing’s C-17, would qualify under the restricted conditions.
The process would eliminate any other options, including the European Airbus super elite A400M, which is both a tactical and strategic airlifter that can do all of the tactical work the Hercules and C-130J cannot do, and also perform most of the strategic airlift missions Canada requires.
Now, it’s known O’Connor did consulting work for Airbus Military. But changing the current procurement process to a totally open competition process is not playing favourites with any company. It is simply about ensuring we do the right thing by our military men and women: Changing the process should eliminate any favouritism, or perception of conflicts.
First, look at what it is our military is being asked to do. Work out all the limitations of the existing equipment and how it has impeded operations in the past, then look at the modern roles the Armed Forces face.
Then you say to all the companies out there, “Hey, here’s what we need to be able to do, give us your solutions as to how we can do it.”
And finally, you have experts select the option that will allow the military to perform its task most efficiently and safely and will give the taxpayer the best investment.
The new Conservative government has to make only two decisions: To adopt this process, and then to decide whether to accept the recommendation of the experts in charge of the procurement process.
There would be no conflict here. Not even a perceived conflict. An open contest is the best—the only—way to ensure we know what our Armed Forces really need to perform the tasks we assign them and that we come up with the best option for allowing them to perform these tasks as effectively and safely as possible.
Are we 100% behind our military, or will they continue to have to live with the results of Liberal incompetence and political games?
- Suzuki playing gutter politics - Sunday March 4, 2007 at 10:41 am
- Grit record terror-ible - Tuesday February 27, 2007 at 9:51 am
- Britain’s Blair takes tumble - Sunday February 18, 2007 at 10:53 am
