Mr. Speaker, here it is, another night and again I am rising to address the issue of our fighter jet replacements here in Canada and how the Liberals have turned this whole fiasco into a circus.
I first raised the question we are dealing with tonight back on June 13. I was wondering about how the government was going to go out and sole-source 18 Super Hornets from Boeing when the government is in an argument with Boeing over the trade action it took against Bombardier.
We know it is very unlikely that the Liberal government is going to deal with Boeing now, and the minister has even called Boeing an untrusted partner.
Back in May I raised the question, and 13 former commanders of the Royal Canadian Air Force said that instead of buying Super Hornets, just a small fleet of Super Hornets, from Boeing, which may take years to actually procure, if there was a so-called capability gap that the defence minister had imagined, the best way to address that need to increase the fleet from 77 legacy CF-18 Hornets is to go out and buy legacy F-18 Hornets from other countries, such as Australia.
Back on May 29, the minister said:
Yes, there were options for buying old ones. No, we do not want to buy used equipment; we want to invest in new planes.
Lo and behold, the minister has actually gone and tasked members of the Royal Canadian Air Force and those in the government in charge of procurement to go and evaluate those used legacy Hornets, those F-18s that are down in Australia.
It is interesting to note that the Australian auditor general did a report on the legacy F-18 Hornets. Right now Australia plans to roll down those planes, and withdraw them from service in 2020, because they are buying new F-35s. If anyone is confused, the Australians had also bought 24 new Super Hornets. In 2010, Australia bought brand new Super Hornets, the F-18s, and are going to use them until 2025.
Our fighter jets, our legacy fleet of CF-18s, are only tasked to fly until 2025. Time is crunching down on us here. We are now looking at less than eight years—it is seven and a half years—to replace our entire fleet. Buying those Super Hornets is not possible.
The problem is that these legacy Hornets coming from Australia, that the auditor general has said would be retired in 2020, three years from now, have significant aged-aircraft issues, which are resulting in maintenance durations and costs becoming less predictable. All but nine of the aircraft have experienced structural fatigue above that expected for the airframe hours that have already been flown. That fatigue count is higher than that of even the legacy Hornets here in Canada and those in the U.S. navy.
Why would we want to buy these old, worn-out, stressed-out, beat-up legacy Hornets from Australia? Why does the government not get on with the fact that we need to have an open and fair competition right now to replace our CF-18s, and let everybody compete so we can get the new aircraft on time, in the best interests of our taxpayers, our aerospace industry, and the safety of our pilots?