Monday, April 9, 2012

"Not $9-billion. Not $15- or $16-billion. Not $25-billion. Forty-billion dollars. So far."

Where is Wildrose Federal when you need em?

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/news/blog.html?b=fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/04/09/f-35-price-gap-andrew-coyne

'And that information goes back to the year 2010. Those figures are there for all to see'

— Peter MacKay, Defence Minister, on CTV's Question Period, April 8

To be fair, there's a sense in which this is almost true. The government may have left about $10-billion out of its public estimates of the cost of the F-35 deal. But that doesn't mean it wasn't on the public record… somewhere.

5 comments:

The Rat said...

A scandal over money not spent yet? Money that likely won't be spent. And once again, I wonder if this could all be avoided if certain previous governments didn't force DND to be creative in order to get the equipment they needed. When regional industrial benefits become more important than the combat usefulness of the equipment. Or maybe if they weren't worried about getting crappy second-hand equipment...

Anonymous said...

Ontario's junior kindergarten program will cost $30billion more than forecast over 30 years as well.

At least as the rat points out there are alternatives for the jets. The money has not been spent yet.

Anonymous said...

Don't you see, the Conservatives would have never lied to parliament and the public, and would have never fought an election on a false premise if it weren't for the Liberals. Of course, we all know the sponsorship scandal would have never happened had it not been for Mulroney.

The unaccounted for, unexplained, 10 billion may not have been spent, however, we have yet to see the final tally for this boondoggle. Clearly the government is backing away from buying these planes. There will be real financial costs for backing out of the MOU (which was not a contract and would not have been repeatedly referred to as a contract were it not for the Liberals). The penalties may well exceed the $200 million lost in the sponsorship scandal.

Harper clearly has always had a hidden agenda, which we now know was to replace the Liberals by becoming the Liberals.

Anonymous said...

Would it be reasonable to ask the opposition what jets should be bought if any and how much they would cost to buy and maintain?

The opposition is weak. They are holding their opponents to a higher standard than they ask of themselves.

It was OK to squander and hide billions when they were in gov't when purchasing military equipment.

Here, even before anything has been bought they pretend to be outraged.

Enjoy the wilderness....

Anonymous said...

Please, that's a given, no need to post it. Clearly, this is entirely the opposition's fault.