F-35 argument tightened up.

What a pile of poo. There is no other gen 5 plane in the world. What will compete with it? The Russians have 2 they "claim" in the same class, and that is dubious, but if they did we could not buy it anyhow. So this competitive bid nonsense is so disingenuous I can't believe Ignatieff is saying it with a straight face. Military procurement is hard to do and easy to have cost over-runs with. I don't know the helicopter modifications Canada ordered that put off delivery 5 years, but this is typical especially for competitive bids. For example, consider how quickly options add up in the price of a new car. The dealership is competing for your business with every other dealership in town, and sometimes province. So to get you to sign on the dotted line the price lure is extraordinarily low. They make their money not selling you the car, but rather on the accessories and extended warranties. It looks like Boeing patted us down by increasing the price of those choppers by more that 70%. I think a review of those costs ARE in order.

However, the f-35 is our plane, never since the Arrow have we had an opportunity like this.
Yes the Arrow program was expensive in its day. Canada would buy them, but on the global scale, we were head to head with the US for sales. This is the first supersonic plane since then that we actually had a hand in building. Over 100 Canadian companies have earned Canada 1/2 a billion dollars, compared to the 380 million of "investment".

The 14-16b number includes maintenance for 30 years for pity sake. Do you think maintenance was added to the sticker price of our CF-18s? Give me a break! Canada just ponied up for over a 1/2 billion for maintenance on those old girls until our new planes can be delivered. So lets be clear, the EXAGGERATED number--inflated by the ministry of defense to allow for cost over-runs was 8.9 billion.

However, LHM has gone on record that it thinks it will spend 12 billion dollars in Canada.
What you say? 8.9 purchase price but we get 12 back. Ah yeah there are 3000 of these planes we will be supplying parts for! We are freaking being given these planes. We are being refunded more than we are paying for them!

Just give this a whiff, that horse pucky you smell is the spin-doctors and politicians who know all of this but think the Canadian public is too stupid to do the math & catch on.
Come on Canada, give this a real good sniff. Iggy is looking down his nose at these ignorant unwashed Canadians, thinking he can get away with murder!