From fighters to first responders

 

Why Canada should invest in disaster response, not fighter jets

The Canadian government is in the process of reviewing its current plan to acquire 88 F-35 fighter jets, and rightly so. The program is projected to cost $839.7 million per aircraft over a lifecycle of just 37 years. That’s a total price tag of $73.9 billion, even before the usual budget overruns. This makes the F-35 the most expensive procurement in Canadian military history, and one of the least justifiable in terms of strategic necessity and fiscal responsibility.

Critics of the F-35 purchase have long raised serious concerns. The jets are not only expensive and maintenance-intensive, but also ill-suited to Canada’s core defence tasks like Arctic patrols, search and rescue, and sovereignty enforcement missions. These jets are specifically designed for high-intensity combat: engaging in peer-to-peer warfare, stealth strikes and deep penetration missions of enemy air defences. In other words, they are built for offensive missions, not the kind of work the RCAF does on a day-to-day basis.

More troubling is that the F-35’s source code is controlled remotely by the United States, meaning there is a potential “kill switch” that could disable Canadian jets on a whim. This alone should be a non-starter for any country that values sovereignty over its own defence capabilities. Buying the planes would deepen Canada’s reliance on the US defence industry and its software systems, creating a dangerous form of dependency at a time when American policy is becoming more unpredictable and hostile to Canadian interests and values.

Beyond these issues lies a deeper strategic concern: opportunity cost. Every dollar spent on aircraft for hypothetical hot wars is a dollar not spent on urgent issues facing Canadians and the world today—needs like disaster preparedness, climate resilience, and humanitarian aid.

Indeed, we remain dangerously underprepared for the security implications of intensifying climate catastrophes, which are no longer distant possibilities. They are here now, growing more frequent, destructive, and complex.  (more...)

From fighters to first responders