Big Liberal Win In Canada Is Bad News For The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter 

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Canada has had its very own F-35 saga over the last decade. In Ottawa, the beleaguered jet is so politically controversial that its procurement has become a major policy differential between the parties. Now, with the Liberals winning yesterday’s vote, it seems nearly impossible for the F-35 to find a home with America’s neighbor to the north.

Make sure to read the piece below for full background and opinion:

Just last month, Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau made it clear that he intends to scrap the F-35 program all together. In its place he intends to run an transparent competition to choose a more affordable fighter. Even without Trudeau’s recent comments, it is crystal clear that Canada’s Liberal party wants nothing to do with the F-35. Their official platform on the F-35 is laid out on their webpage:

“We will not buy the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber.

We will immediately launch an open and transparent competition to replace the CF-18 fighter aircraft. The primary mission of our fighter aircraft should remain the defense of North America, not stealth first-strike capability.

We will reduce the procurement budget for replacing the CF-18s, and will instead purchase one of the many, lower-priced options that better match Canada’s defense needs.”

Trudeau has said that savings from dropping the F-35 will be used to invest in Canada’s naval capabilities. This reallocation of funds would include investing in new icebreakers, search and rescue ships and aircraft and building more surface combatants. Trudeau has also alluded to an initiative to refocus Canada’s military into a leaner, smarter, more potent fighting force. One that incorporates new technologies like long-endurance unmanned surveillance aircraft.

As for a new fighter aircraft, Trudeau and the Liberals have stated again and again that Canada’s fighter corps’ primary mission is self defense, and there is no need for the F-35’s expensive stealth first-strike capabilities. As such, the likely contenders will to replace Canada’s aging Hornets will be the F/A-18E Super Hornet, the French Rafale, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and possibly the JAS-39E Gripen, with the Super Hornet being the clear incumbent.

Trudeau said this at a press conference on September 21st:

“The Conservative government never actually justified or explained why they felt Canada needed a fifth-generation fighter. They just talked about it like it was obvious. It was obvious, as we saw through the entire process, that they were particularly, and some might say unreasonably or unhealthily, attached to the F-35 aircraft.

The fact is we need an aircraft that’s going to meet Canada’s No. 1 priority, which is defending North American airspace, and there are a wide number of very credible, serious aircraft out there who can bid for that and be respectable and responsible replacements for the CF-18s instead of the F-35s.”

The end of the Harper Administration in Canada and the start of a Trudeau Administration could be especially welcome news to Boeing’s Super Hornet program. Orders will be needed to keep the Super Hornet production line open into the 2020s. Replacing Canada’s roughly 75 aging CF-18 Hornets could mean close to a four year extension of production for Boeing’s St. Louis plant at Boeing’s stated minimum production rate of 24 Super Hornets per year.

Additional orders from other foreign countries could keep the line churning well into the next decade, but securing Canada’s order would take a lot of near-term pressure off the Super Hornet program.