Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate today on the Liberal opposition day motion regarding the F-35 contract.
With respect to this particular contract, I want to go back to the estimates debate in the committee of the whole in this House on May 27. At that point in time, theMinister of National Defence was in the House answering questions, along with officials who were advising him. We had an issue with respect to a question I asked about what was to happen with the replacement for the F-18s.
Early in the debate, the minister said very clearly that there would be:
...an open, competitive, transparent process that [would] see us receive the best capability, to provide that capability to the best pilots in the world.
Later on in the debate, on page 3064 of the May 27 Hansard, he came back to say:
Mr. Chair, I will come back to that in an instant. I just want to be very clear on the record that the reference to the next generation of fighter aircraft does not preclude a competition, and an open and transparent one. In fact, the joint strike fighter program thus far has provided Canadian industry with access to high technology industry opportunities. [And we] have already [had] contracts with a total estimated value of over $325 million.
That is consistent with the statements that were given to the defence committee by Alan Williams, the former ADM materiel, who said that the participation in the joint strike fighter program was not a decision to purchase that particular aircraft. The decision to engage in the joint strike fighter program was to participate as Canadians, with other countries, to develop and design a new jet fighter. However, there was no commitment to actually buy it.
What we now have is the government taking the position that there was a competition back in 2000. It does not understand why the opposition motion is asking for a competitive bidding process to choose a replacement for the F-18. It is pretty obvious why we are asking for one. It is because that is the way defence procurement is supposed to take place. In fact, that is what was promised by the Minister of National Defence here in this House on May 27.
It seems that there has been a bit of a pattern going on over the last little while. The House of Commons went into recess for the summer and, lo and behold, in the middle of the summer, on July 15, there was a press conference, with a prototype F-35 in the background. An announcement with big fanfare was made that Canada was committing to buying 65 F-35 jet fighters with kind of an unannounced cost. However, the media quickly came to the conclusion that we were talking about a $16 billion program that the taxpayers of Canada were expected to pay for, without any competition, based on an announcement made by the government over the summer, after making a commitment in this House to having an open and transparent competition.
What was wrong with that? What was wrong was that the basic procurement principles and very basic government operations where we decide, first, what it is we want and what it is we need, and then we go about trying to find it, were not followed.
Once again, in defence procurement, the starting point is supposed to be what is called a statement of operational requirements. In a statement of operational requirements, the military does not go to the departmental officials and say that it wants to buy a Chinook, that it wants to buy a particular aircraft or that it wants to buy a particular item.
The starting point is supposed to be what our needs are for an aircraft, whether it be a search and rescue fixed wing, a helicopter for operations in Afghanistan, or a fighter jet, a patrol jet, a patrol plane or whatever it is, and then what we need it for and what we want the equipment to be able to do.
This statement of operational requirements is a complex process and it often involves, in some cases, many years of study and analysis by experts within the Department of National Defence. In fact, the statement of operational requirements is often sent out in draft form to potential suppliers for their comments and review and then comes back to the department to be finalized. When the statement of operational requirements, which shows what the need is and what the capabilities are, is finalized, then a tender document is put together for a competition.
The document would show the industry our requirements and then the industry would put together a bid as to whether it can meet these requirements, what the cost would be, what the delivery times would be and so on, although some of those would obviously be within the tender documents.
What happened here? I am sure the government is quite within its right to talk about the process of the development of the joint strike fighter but that was a separate project. It did not commit Canada or any other nation, including the U.S., by the way, to buy any of the planes at any time. The memorandum of understanding is about the development and provides for the acquisition of these planes and for long-term maintenance contracts and participation in the contracts for supplying the supply chain for the production. That is a separate item from the defence procurement process which was developed, defined and designed to give our armed forces what they need at the lowest cost to taxpayers, meeting operational requirements and needs.
We have been told that the defence department was advised back as early as 2006 that the joint strike fighter was what it wanted to have and what it needed and yet we find out from the defence committee hearings that the statement of operational requirements was not actually developed until the spring of this year. The statement of operational requirements appears to have been finalized somewhere around April or May of this year, at the same time as the minister was saying that there would be an open and fair competition.
Then we had a decision in July to have a sole source of the F-35 by Canada under that program. So far, we have had witnesses from Boeing come to our committee and, based on what has been made available to our committee and publicly in terms of the capability requirements, say that they could meet those needs. Through their capabilities, they wanted to be a part of that program and they could have bid on this jet but they were denied that opportunity.
We also had representatives from a French manufacturer who also said that their company could meet the needs of the statement of operational requirements.
We will hear arguments from the other side, which we already heard in the committee, that their planes are not as good as the JSF or the F-35, that this one is not as good as that one, that that one is more expensive than the other one, and so on.
All of that should not really be the subject of debate in a parliamentary committee or in this House. That is something that is done through a sophisticated professional process designed to ensure not that someone can score political points in a committee or in this House, but that the factual capabilities, the actual numbers, the real tests, are being examined when a decision is being made.
We have not heard from all the potential bidders, but it is pretty clear from what we have heard so far that discussions stopped with these other manufacturers at a certain point. In fact, they were not given an opportunity to disclose to the Canadian government the full capabilities of their own aircraft. So there was really no basis to make the kind of comparison that could have and should have been made when making a decision of this nature.
That portion of my remarks has to do with the process itself. The process is clearly flawed. We are talking about spending, when all is said and done, as much as $16 billion of public funds, devoted to a particular aircraft to replace the F-18. That is part of the issue that this particular motion focuses on.
There is another part of the issue that I want to address, and that is, do we need this particular aircraft versus other possibilities for Canadian defence requirements?
I did not mean to be flippant when I said it, but I think it does capture the essence of my argument and the question that was raised, that one does not need a Maserati to drive to work and we do not need a stealth fighter to patrol Canada's Arctic or east coast.
That begs the question, what are our actual defence needs and do those defence needs require what I have called “the latest and the greatest”? It may well be, when all is said and done, that the F-35 is the most capable fighter jet available in the world today to do any number of things, but are those any number of things the things that we need to have done?
I think that kind of exercise is one of strategic analysis that ought to be available to this Parliament and to the committee, an analysis of Canada's plans for the future and how we plan to engage in international operations. Do we need the kind of capability that's there?
For example, in a major international conflict, will Canada's contribution, if that is what we choose to buy, actually make any difference in an international operation when we compare Canada's 65 jets as potentially part of an operation with the Americans who may have 2,500 or 3,500 jets?
The last time the jets were engaged in activity, the real issue was finding space at airports to land them, because access to aerodromes and airstrips was restricted and only a certain number could be accommodated. Is it really necessary for Canada to have this capability as part some international effort?
Who are we going to be fighting against? We heard it said that we do not know, we are making plans for the next 30 or 40 years, and the only thing we can really do is to say that we will get this because it is the best available today.
Is that really what Canada needs to do? The only way to find that out is to have a significant type of military strategic analysis made available for debate. That is normally done through a defence white paper that analyzes the various options for Canada and sets forth recommendations as to how the Canadian Forces ought to be configured, what kind of equipment it should have and what its needs are. It makes an argument that all of us can have a look at.
I have heard the Canada First defence strategy called an equivalent to that, but in my view, that is very inadequate and superficial. I do not mean to dismiss it entirely, but it amounts to a shopping list of new equipment and refurbishment of the equipment we have. It does not hang together as a strategy, but rather, a suggestion that we should acquire this, that, and the other type of equipment over the next while.
We had a fleet of F-18 fighter jets. We lost another one last night, unfortunately. These have been operating for more than 20 years, some as many as 30 years. They received what was called a mid-life refurbishment, which was only completed in March of this year. They were part of the defence of Europe during the cold war. They were used as a military air presence in Canada, particularly over Canada's coastal waters.
During the cold war, the Russians were constantly testing Canadian defence responses and these jets were the ones scrambled to be present and show that we were paying attention and that we knew when somebody was active. With the techniques of satellites and other sophisticated technology today, surveillance by itself is not really the issue. The issue is the ability to respond. But what are we responding to?
In the case of Russia, if they care to make them airborne, which they do occasionally, we are responding to technology from the 1950s, long-range bombers that are run by propellers. They take many hours to get to Canadian airspace or even near it. Is that something that we need a stealth fighter to deal with? Is that something that we need the very latest of technology to deal with? I do not think so.
There are those who scoff at that and one of them is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence, who is a former fighter pilot himself. He will say that fighter pilots want to have the latest technology, everything that is available, because that is what they should have, and there is an argument for that. However, there is also an argument that says Canada does not have to play the same role in international military activities as other countries. We can define the role that we wish to play. We can decide what we need.
So the second part of my argument as to what needs to happen before we make this kind of commitment is to have a thorough review of the actual needs of Canada and the requirements for Canada's participation in military activities. We need to patrol our coasts, we need a fisheries patrol, we need to have a presence in the Arctic and throughout the country, but do we need this very expensive jet fighter to fill that need? Can the needs of Canada be met with something less expensive with a different configuration?
Those are the kinds of questions that we in the NDP have asked and challenged the government on and to date have not received a satisfactory answer. We support this motion. Yes, there ought to be an open competition. However, before that takes place, there also ought to be a thorough review and debate about what Canada actually needs in the air over the next while to replace the F-18s.
