Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak today about the question I asked the government on September 17. My question was mainly about transparency and the release of information about the program to replace the CF-18s.
Virtually no progress has been made in the past two months. When I asked my previous question, I wanted to know how the government could honestly say that it was implementing the Auditor General's recommendation when a series of emails clearly showed that the Department of National Defence had tried to influence the report and was rejecting the conclusions.
In the meantime, we have learned that the famous national fighter procurement secretariat, which is supposed to review the entire acquisition process and provide Parliament with revised specific costs, will obtain information about the life cycle costs of the F-35s from the Department of National Defence. We are talking about the very same department that was deemed incapable of managing the procurement program that it had bungled from the beginning, a department that kept two sets of books, one for the department and one for the public, to ensure that it would not have to reveal the true cost of this program.
I am not sure this is what the Auditor General had in mind when he talked about due diligence. The truth is that the sole-sourcing of fighter aircraft is the biggest military procurement botch-up in Canadian history. It is even worse than what the Liberals did.
The Auditor General said that the process has to be done again. The Minister of Public Works and Government Services says that she is looking at other options, while the chief of the air force staff says that, to his knowledge, other options are not being looked at. The Department of National Defence confirms that, yes, other options are being studied. No one is saying, or seems to know, what the other options are. We have complete silence.
On top of that, the special committee that was set up to study the Auditor General's report has been gagged. However, the NDP and the Auditor General are not the only ones sounding the alarm. A few days ago, an article appeared expressing the concerns of one of the American air force's best pilots. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Niemi, a former F-22 test pilot, said that the American air force was making a mistake by acquiring an all-stealth fleet. In his view, stealth may have advantages, but the disadvantages must not be forgotten; this is something to be taken seriously.
His comments remind me strangely of those we have repeatedly made in committee for months, when the F-35s are discussed. The government may seem not to want to listen to the NDP, so perhaps it should pay attention to what a stealth aircraft test pilot says. He goes on to say that, in his opinion, stealth provides no advantage in conflicts such as those in Afghanistan or Iraq, since 2003, and it cannot guarantee success in future struggles.The F-22, the F-35's big brother, remains inferior to older fourth-generation aircraft in some scenarios.
All the evidence seems to suggest that there is reasonable doubt about the choice of replacement aircraft for the CF-18s, evidence that the government is ignoring month after month. After announcing in July 2010 that Canada would be buying 65 F-35s, the government is backpedalling and saying that the decision has not yet been made. But, in light of the non-existent work and the different stories about the F-35 secretariat, I would like to ask the government if anyone really has any idea of how botched-up this program is.