Mr. Speaker, it has come to my attention that the Royal Canadian Mint recently issued a set of coins commemorating milestone aircraft in Canadian aviation history.
To my surprise missing from this series is the Avro Arrow. As we all know, the Arrow was an aircraft decades ahead of its time and its cancellation resulted in a setback to the Canadian aviation industry from which it has yet to recover.
Most of the talented Canadians who worked on its development were forced to move to the United States where a great many were snapped up by NASA to work on the Apollo space program.
In 1958 the Arrow achieved speeds nearly twice that of sound and altitudes approaching 60,000 feet. Despite this the government of the day cancelled the project and ordered all tooling, plans and aircraft destroyed.
By allowing the exclusion of the Arrow from the series this government has effectively reinforced the shameful decision of a previous Conservative administration.