Domestic development is an investment in your own country, it develops and pays skilled labor and supporting industries. When you buy jets from America, virtually all of that money is gone from Canada forever, funneled into America with Canada getting nothing out of it besides a jet which will need spare parts also from America, technicians from America, and after some years will need to be replaced with another American jet because after you've stabbed your own domestic industry in the back now you have no other choice than to continue buying foreign.
By that argument we should do that with everything. Maybe...with tariffs? /s
Doing that is more expensive and means we get us less for more - and we'd almost still rely on other countries for components and resources. All being equal, it is better to buy foreign goods cheaper and then have money leftover to focus on investing what you're good at. Canada is too small to economically fully design and build a modern plane, engines, missiles, radar, etc to compete with the US, China, etc. We certainly can't afford to do that with everything else, as well.
There are absolutely overriding strategic and security reasons you may want to do some of this anyways, but as a general rule we'd be far better diversifying our defence alliances (eg buying a mix from France, Korea, Japan, US, UK, etc) plus having something really good to offer said allies so we can be interdependent. Countries (including the US as we're learning) are not more powerful when they go it alone.
Protected industries almost always get lazy and noncompetitive. Canada is building our own version of the Type 26 frigate for almost double the cost per boat of Australia and the UK (which already ate the design costs!) despite the fact that we're going to be building the most of them so we should in theory scale cheaper. There are some reasons for that (they will be the most capable type 26's afloat), but it's mostly just because the government wants to subsidize Irving and east coast shipbuilders and there's no real scale or expertise because they literally can't market their work outside of Canada.
The argument is that naively looking at the price tags of domestic and foreign weapon systems doesn't tell you the true costs to the country. A dollar given to a foreign country costs much more than a dollar spent inside your own economy.
This is hardly even a novel or controversial point. Any defense spending expert will tell you this. Even that trendy Perun guy that reddit loves has made this precise point.
If this were true, Argentina would be super rich and Singapore would be super poor.
But it is not because just “keeping a dollar in your country” chasing less productive work/goods causes productivity and competitive problems the more it happens and longer it goes on.
There are plenty of defense experts who’ll say the opposite of what you say they will (though they’re open to exceptions for security reasons).
It is better to buy cheaper/better stuff abroad and have others do the same for your competitive stuff.
You are being deliberately obtuse. Investing in domestic production isn't an infinite money hack, that isn't the argument. The argument is that you cannot make a apples-to-apples dollars-to-dollar price comparison to see how much it will cost your country to outsource production of hardware. With the benifit of hindsight, we know that Diefenbaker's decision spelled the death of Canada's aerospace industry. Their engineers moved to America or left their careers behind. The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets.
You’re giving vague responses with no data to back it up, so that’s a rude statement.
> The argument is that you cannot make a apples-to-apples dollars-to-dollar price comparison to see how much it will cost your country to outsource production of hardware
Yes you can. The F-35 flyway costs ($82m) are similar to the Saab Gripen ($85m) despite the F-35 being superior in almost every way (the one notable exception being the Gripen is good at flying off of more rustic environments). The simple reason is scale. There are similar numbers for French planes and they’re finally giving up for their next-gen planes and working with the rest of Europe. Sweden is all but throwing in the towel going forwards, too.
You’re essentially saying Canada should pay more for less to support jobs and expertise that will produce less and cost more.
Canada has been a net contributor in the F-35 program (as have most of the other countries that have purchased it).
> With the benifit of hindsight, we know that Diefenbaker's decision spelled the death of Canada's aerospace industry
Canada has the third largest aerospace industry after the EU and USA (though we go toe to toe with Brazil). Your argument is invalid.
> The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets
This is not true, though the numbers are fuzzy depending on if one includes R&D and number of planes built - so we could spend all day arguing on this. But the engines were languishing in development hell, so we ultimately didn’t know what the final bill would have been (the TV series show them as “this close” to being done, but that wasn’t the case in real life).
The Avro arrow was a really good long range interceptor, but that was about it. The CBC miniseries made it out to be this amazing plane that was better at everything, which it was not. The Voodoo that was bought instead was arguably inferior in policing Canada’s north, but was much better suited for all the other roles the Air Force participated in, especially European NATO commitments. We would have had to buy another plane anyways, but the one plane already stretched Canada’s resources. We’re just not big enough to do that.
> Their engineers moved to America or left their careers behind. The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets
There absolutely was a brain drain to the US for many of the engineers. As I mentioned in another post, cancelling the Arrow was arguably the right decision for the wrong reasons, but because it was done for the wrong reasons there wasn’t any thought put through on focusing on another project. A huge chunk of the blame lies with the executives at avro canada, who over-extended trying to do everything (plane, engine, etc) and then got burned playing with politics.
The only serious reason to go with the Gripen or any other alternative to the F-35 is if we seriously believe that there's been an actual realignment in the outlook of the USA. Carney asserts this is fact, as does Trump, but US liberals obviously believe they'll take power and "normalize" things again in 2026 and 2028.
And if they do so, it will look very foolish to have have pursued an aerospace program which provides less value for money.
If US politics and economics remains in this crisis state for an extended period of time, then I would see sticking with F-35 as a missed opportunity to realign Canada's economic-political-military relationships for the second half of the century.
My personal opinion is that we should cautiously move forward with the F-35 and either way start moving to diversify future orders long-term.
The Gripen is wrong for Canada unless we actually do think we'll be invaded by the US and need to operate away from runways (and even then let's be honest, we will only repel an invasion from the United States if we go full-on gorilla warfare and insurgency). For the North we need planes with the range for expanses of the north and ideally two engines (though single engine planes are much more reliable enough now). We may want to consider acquiring AWACS capabilities, especially if China starts mucking around up there (they claim to be serious about doing that).
If money were no object and Trump wasn't ruining everything, ideally we'd have F-35s for force projection and a side order of new F-18 Super Hornets (and maybe a few F-18G Growlers - though the latest block of Gripens do have a respectable electronic warfare suite) to keep up patrols in the North.
The only practical alternatives are the Rafael and Eurofighter which are fine planes in their own right for their generations, but have supply lines across an ocean and have some compromises that are not ideal for Canada (the F-18 is larger and has a more powerful radar, which is better suited for long-range interception). Canada should seriously look at joining Europe's next-gen fighter project, though.
All of this is just for planes, too. We need to start taking the north seriously and that means more naval capability, which is a whole other story. At the time I thought Harper's announcements on it were a waste of time, but he was right - the tragedy is they were only paying it lip service failed to deliver.
the tragedy is they were only paying it lip service failed to deliver.
That about sums up the last 25 years of Canadian economic/political/military "planning" generally.
It's time to get serious. I don't so much care about the military per-se, but industrial capacity, manufacturing, etc. generally.
And of course the problem with "taking the North seriously" in the context of what Harper was suggesting is what this was almost entirely purely about from an exploitative POV (military and resources) rather than recognizing that people live there (and lived there first) and that qualify of life for the people that live there needs to be improved.
A few mines, some pipelines, and a military base doesn't make that happen. Taking the north seriously also means providing services.
I 100% agree. We can't do everything ourselves, but we need to be serious about things.
It's also going to mean several very hard decisions. There's going to need to be some choices between [tax cuts if you're from the right | social programs if you're from the left] and spending on these kinds of things. I also have some very nervous feelings about long-term planning with all the partisanship in the current environment.
