this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Carney orders review of F-35 fighter jet purchase from U.S.’s Lockheed Martin (www.ctvnews.ca)
submitted 1 day ago by HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked for a review of Canada’s plan to purchase a fleet of F-35 fighter jets.

The deal with Lockheed Martin and the U.S. government is for 88 planes at a cost of about US$85 million each.

A spokesperson for Defence Minister Bill Blair said Carney has asked Blair to look into whether the F-35 contract is the best investment for Canada, or if there are better options.

“We need to do our homework given the changing environment, and make sure that the contract in its current form is in the best interests of Canadians and the Canadian Armed Forces,” Blair’s press secretary Laurent de Casanove said.

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[–] kbal@fedia.io 5 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

You're underestimating the size of $70 billion. It's more like high-speed rail to every major city in the country.

[–] Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Nah, $70 billion is about right, and that's a conservative estimate. If it turns out anything like california high speed rail then it could definitely go into $100 billion territory.

Common law countries like the u.s., Canada and u.k. are really inefficient at building hsr due to property rights issues. California is still struggling to build its hsr even though it's scope has been reduced, its budget keeps ballooning. Similarly, the hs2 project in England to connect London to Manchester has also been cut back to just Birmingham, and it's also over budget ringing in £ 50 billion for just that section.

If this were china then yeah you could probably get a Vancouver to Quebec line for $70 billion, but the Canadian central government isnt that strong and would have to deal with a lot more regulations.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 1 points 16 hours ago

California is the textbook case of paying way to much for that sort of thing, isn't it? It's always the one they go to when they want to make a crazy inflated budget look reasonable by comparison. But yeah, I was seriously underestimating the cost anyway. Maybe we should just go with medium-speed rail.