Trudeau's about-face on $19B F-35 fighter jet purchase 'severely' impacted air force: MacKay

While Canada may have finally committed to buying a fleet of F-35 fighter jets after a yearslong saga, a former Conservative cabinet minister argues it comes at a time when the country needs — and could have had — these aircraft much sooner.

"The delay, of course, has impacted quite severely on the Royal Canadian Air Force in terms of recruitment and retention of pilots, fighter aircraft capability, and the world has changed," former defence minister Peter MacKay said in an interview with CTV National News Senior Political Correspondent Glen McGregor.

MacKay, who oversaw the F-35 file as defence minister in former prime minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government, pointed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and exposure in Canada's North as reasons why having these fighter jets on Canadian runways is "quite critical at this moment."

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"The complexity of defending the Arctic, our commitments in Norad (North American Aerospace Defence Command), none of that has really changed," he said.

"If anything, it's gotten more complex and more challenging, which is why frankly, without you know again making this a partisan issue, it's why we made the determination that we needed the aircraft in 2012."

On Monday, Defence Minister Anita Anand confirmed that the federal government would purchase 88 F-35s to replace the Royal Canadian Air Force's aging CF-18s.

The first 16 fighter jets will be delivered in 2026, while the next 72 will be ordered in later years, all for approximately $19 billion.

Altogether, the total price tag will reach approximately $70 billion after including costs to operating the aircraft over 40 years and build new hangars and other facilities.

"As our world grows darker, with Russia's illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine and China's increasingly assertive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific, this project has taken on heightened significance, especially given the importance of interoperability with our allies," Anand said.

The process to procure the fighter jets truly got underway when the Conservatives under Harper announced in July 2010 that they planned to buy 65 F-35s without a competition.

The federal government at the time was accused of lying about the true cost and capabilities of the planes.

In 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that the Liberals would not buy the F-35.

Instead, the federal government opted to purchase 18 Boeing Super Hornets, without a competition, in the interim until a full competition could take place.

The government cancelled that plan after Boeing launched a trade dispute with Montreal aerospace firm Bombardier.

The F-35 was eventually chosen in a bidding process that began in July 2019.

"The F-35 has a long and some would say tortured history," MacKay said. "But the bottom line is we have known for a long time, all governments have known since the '90s, that this aircraft that we're flying currently, the CF-18, had to be replaced. And my fear then as now is that partisan politics continue to play too large a role in the interference, obstruction and delay."

Procurement expert Alan Williams, who has written critically of the previous federal government's handling of the F-35 issue, said in an interview with CTV National News that there was "no justifiable reason" to purchase the jets previously without a competition.

"You know, a decade later, we now have a pretty good idea of costs," he said. "We know what it can basically do and we ran it through an open fair and transparent competition. So a decade makes a big difference."

With files from CTVNews.ca Senior Digital Parliamentary Reporter Rachel Aiello and The Canadian Press