Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the parliamentary secretary, but, again, he is just going on with this fabricated capability. The Liberals have a credibility gap on this. Let us look at what people actually have said about the sole sourcing of the F-18.
Alan Williams said it best. He is a former assistant deputy minister for materiel. He said, “You don’t tell a company you intend on buying their product and then try to negotiate a price...You lose any negotiating power you might have had.” Even the government is saying that it is going to cost $5 billion to $7 billion to buy 18 fighter jets. That is over $330 million apiece. That is ridiculous and a waste of taxpayer money.
George Petrolekas, a retired colonel, said, “an interim new aircraft purchase solves little, and if anything, constrains Canada’s future options”. We just cannot go ahead with this.
It comes down to this. We have a government that is led by the Prime Minister who has no interest in funding our Canadian Armed Forces properly. The government has cut now over $12 billion from future procurement, so I do not know how it will pay for this fighter jet. The government should move immediately to an open, fair, and transparent competition so we get the right plane today.