The News Rundown
- 25 years after Canada signed on to the US Joint Strike Fighter Program to develop the F-35 under Prime Minister Jean Chretien we have secured a deal to buy the planes.
- The context behind this deal is why we’re talking about this on the show this week.
- Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay in 2010 announced that we’d pay $9b to buy the jets with delivery initially anticipated in 2016.
- The F-35 project saw delays and then candidate Trudeau promised to cancel the deal in the 2015 election. The idea instead was that the government would invest money into the navy and veteran supports. That never happened.
- In 2015 the Liberal leader said, “They [being the Conservatives] 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 angle that Trudeau took at the time was that he was aiming for Canada to have a “leaner, more agile, and better equipped military” but as we know, that didn’t exactly happen either.
- The F-35 program drew controversy even before 2015 in that there was controversy around the announced funding for the planes in that the plan didn’t include maintaining or operating them.
- Today the price tag is $19b for 88 jets including upgrades to the facilities in Cold Lake, Alberta and Bagotville, Quebec where the jets will be based.
- Defence Minister Anita Anand said that this is the largest investment for the airforce in over 30 years.
- Which when analyzing her words, shows the small amount we spend on the military.
- Over the entire lifespan of the fleet it’s estimated that they will cost about $70b.
- With this acquisition we’ll have more opportunity for discussion around whether or not we should increase defence spending to 2% of GDP as some other nations have done in Europe and most recently as Japan has done. But that’s a topic for another show.
- We’ll get the first 4 planes sometime in 2026 and the remainder by 2034.
- This story should serve as a case study in wedge politics in Canada and part of a greater series on how Justin Trudeau will use any issue against anyone.
- We could have already taken delivery of the planes and been putting them into service as the US has done but we did not.
- At the time, the Harper government was criticized for leading an opaque process in procuring the plane but given this outcome and how we’ve seen the Trudeau government operate differently, we have to ask maybe that was a feature and not an issue with the Harper government?
- Time and time again the current Liberal administration has moved slow on procurement if at all and put options on the table such as the Saab Gripen which wouldn’t be nearly as interoperable with our allies.
- It’s important to note that at this time that other countries such as Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Greece, and the Czech Republic all have made plans to purchase the F-35.
- What this means is that maybe, just maybe, the Harper government had people with relevant experience in cabinet or in the senior ministries to be able to make these decisions as a business would without the need to spend money to consult and ask around.
- This F-35 debacle should never have happened and should serve as a blueprint for military procurement going forward.
- In simple terms, if our allies, especially NATO allies, are purchasing a major piece of military hardware, it would be wise to buy in since that is going to be the cheaper and more interoperable option than selecting our own piece of hardware.
- We’ve seen this for 50+ years at this point in terms of ammunition, most ammunition used in firearms and battlefield armour are consistent amongst NATO allies.
- It also should serve as a wake-up call that there needs to be more purchasing and less consulting when it comes to the purchase of military hardware and equipment that has been delayed or not happened as detailed many times before on Western Context.
- The political angle is also simple, Justin Trudeau will wedge any issue or any group of people against one another. We didn’t buy the F-35 initially for political reasons despite both the Chretien and Martin government being ok with it. It was just that Stephen Harper inked the deal and Trudeau needed a wedge issue to make news in 2015.
- The same happens today in 2023 on pretty much any issue that enters the Canadian discourse.
- That’s why our country is so polarized and why the F-35 is an excellent case study.
- Supplementals:
- At the end of 2022, we noted that new BC premier David Eby had a lot of problems going on in the province that needed tackling. One of those issues was an increase in property and theft crime happening not just in Vancouver but in smaller cities and towns too, mainly by what are called "prolific criminals", a small number of people that commit a large portion of criminal activity in an area.
- With BC looking at a surplus heading into 2023, there was some extra cash under the provincial mattress that the NDP made big promises to put towards the myriad issues that BC has right now, including the issue of prolific offenders. One of the major problems that people want fixed is the revolving door of the BC court system where criminals are arrested for their actions by the police, and are then almost immediately released back onto the streets. Some cases don't even make it to court due a backlog of cases being heard by judges, stemming back to the early days of the pandemic.
- When David Eby took over the premiership of the province, he made big promises to fix this problem, announcing funding intended to bolster the RCMP and fixing the court backlog. However, some aren't willing to wait for the fruits of the funding to ripen before taking action.
- A group of civilians are at wits’ end with soaring crime rates in the north-eastern BC city of Dawson Creek, which has about 12,000 people. This group, calling themselves 'Citizens Take Action' has begun patrolling the streets, tracking offenders to report to police and sometimes, tailing suspects caught in the act.
- Doug Scott, a leader of Citizens Take Action, said the two-month-old group aims to combat excessive property crime, and feels the RCMP is failing in its mandate to prevent crime, enforce the law and investigate offences.
- Scott said: “You have an individual who commits a property crime — they steal whatever — the RCMP sources the guy, they arrest him, pick him up and he’s back on the streets 10 minutes later. Where does the province figure that this is acceptable behaviour? Our town runs around being scared … the residents are scared because 20 people keep doing 80 per cent of the crime.”
- In November, Dawson Creek RCMP filed a report to mayor and council outlining an increase of 138% in calls about breaking and entering into businesses between January and October 2022, compared to the same timeframe in the previous year. That report said officers also fielded a 54% spike in calls about theft of vehicles and a 33% spike in calls about thefts from vehicles. Other theft calls, including shoplifting, increased 42%, while mental health calls jumped 50%.
- Northern B.C. Crime Stoppers, which is now 38 years old, has reached an all-time record of the number of tips it received in a single year, going up to over 1,200 tips in 2022.
- A Nov. 14 letter from several concerned citizens to the RCMP also outlined several incidents of vehicle theft and threats of violence that month, but said in every instance, officers seemed more interested in arresting and charging the civilian members at the scene than the suspects they had chased down.
- At a Nov. 21 council meeting, Scott addressed Dawson Creek’s mayor and council on behalf of the concerned group, stating that the “status quo is no longer working.” Another presenter from the group said residents of Dawson Creek are “on edge” and sleeping in fear with “bats, guns and bear spray at the ready.”
- A Nov. 15 news release from Dawson Creek RCMP states police were aware of a “vigilante group” in the area and warned that its actions could result in criminal charges or personal civil liabilities and impede investigations.
- Staff Sgt. Kris Clark said: “The RCMP cannot condone or support criminality in any form, including vigilantism, as this puts the broader community at risk. But the community CAN help the police, by providing timely, actionable information that will progress our investigations towards successful charges. We want to assure the public that the RCMP work hard to combat crime and that the safety of our communities is important to us.”
- Earlier this week, Dawson Creek Coun. Charlie Parslow presented a motion to council asking staff to prepare a multi-year proposal for the installation of security cameras in the city, acknowledging a “high level of vandalism and theft.”
- Attorney General Niki Sharma attended that Jan. 9 council meeting virtually, to discuss the community’s safety concerns and reassure them that the province’s Safer Communities Action Plan will strengthen enforcement and improve support services.
- Sharma said in an emailed statement: “As part of this plan, we’re starting up new repeat violent offender coordinated response teams made up of police, dedicated prosecutors and probation officers and expanding mental health crisis response teams so police can focus on crime and people in crisis can get the care they need. At the same time, we are continuing to push for improvements to our national bail system so more repeat, violent offenders are held in custody before trial.”
- Peace River South MLA Mike Bernier said he’s concerned somebody is going to get hurt in the midst of all this, but understands the sentiment that criminals are getting away with more than those impacted by their crimes.
- Bernier said: “Obviously a fear of mine, and I think a lot of people, is that things will escalate. That’s the last thing anybody wants, but in saying that, people are also not going to sit on their hands and let this continue. The property crime has just gotten so far out of control. I mean, you always have a little bit here and there, but now it’s gotten to the point where it's just blatantly obvious, it’s in the middle of the day, it’s right in front of people.”
- When governments fail their people, the people take matters into their own hands. When the BC NDP first took power back in 2017 we said at the time that they would need to govern for the whole province, and not just the big cities of Vancouver and Victoria that voted for them. Almost 6 years in, and we're seeing that the NDP are making all the right noises, but the results are not there. When people are getting their lives severely impacted, they are going to take action to fix that. If the government wants us to trust the criminal justice system in BC, then they need to realize how serious of an issue this is and do more to fix the problem than just throwing money at it.
- Supplementals:
- Last week we covered the governing policy to lower the price of gas at the pumps in Alberta.
- This story continues on from that as when that story was wrapping up, the federal government’s environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson said one of the early 2023 plans will be tabling “just transition” legislation.
- What this means is that the government will actively set up and require oil and gas workers to leave the industry and the Bill will help them transition to other fields.
- Wilkinson is working with Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan and NDP MP Charlie Angus on the Bill as part of the Liberal’s confidence and supply agreement with the NDP.
- We’ll come back to why this link is important in a minute.
- In normal non-polarized times we might expect some input from the NDP and maybe even the Conservatives but that doesn’t happen anymore today.
- That is abundantly evident in the Prime Minister’s swings taken at Alberta when he said, “We've seen for a while Alberta hesitating around investing in anything related to climate change. But CCUS (carbon capture usage and storage) is one of those tangible things… One of the challenges is there is a political class in Alberta that has decided that anything to do with climate change is going to be bad for them or for Alberta… I think there's a role for provinces with surpluses, with the capacity to be investing in their future and their workers future.”
- This was said in an interview with Reuters - a news agency with a global audience.
- The problem is that Alberta has been a leader in carbon capture and storage since 2008, an initiative that started with the Stelmach PCs. The initiative then was greeted with skepticism but it has been something that the Alberta government and energy companies have been working towards.
- The energy companies talk about these efforts on their websites but who also talks about them is the Pathways Alliance. An organization representing 95% of oil sands production. You can learn more about how the industry is going green at pathwaysalliance.ca.
- There can be an argument that Trudeau’s comments can be interpreted as saying that Alberta doesn’t do anything but carbon capture and storage or that we do nothing on climate change.
- But in either case the statement undermines investor confidence to a global audience. Bad.
- It also once again wedges Alberta against the rest of the country.
- The core difference between what Trudeau wants and what’s happening here is that in Alberta the effort is being led by private investment while Trudeau wants to use public money.
- There’s possibility for middle ground but it won’t be reached due to the savoury nature of wedge politics.
- Premier Danielle Smith said, “This is not something that we are late to the table on. It’s the prime minister who is late to the table on this. We will continue to support carbon (capture) technology.”
- The convenient focus here is Smith vs. Trudeau which is how it might end up in a federal election to the Prime Minister’s delight but we have to go back to the federal NDP.
- Charlie Angus has said that the NDP is happy with progress and the NDP is pushing for a financial commitment and for labour unions and indigenous communities to be a core part of the just transition legislation.
- This matters for Alberta because as we have discussed before, the Alberta NDP is subservient to the federal NDP.
- The way the party is structured as per federal NDP charter effectively sets Rachel Notley up as the leader of a provincial branch of the federal party.
- The Alberta NDP at its core has to support the federal NDP or risks being cut off from its support.
- Alberta NDP leader Rachel Notley is not against this just transition legislation and said that it needs to include investment for lower emission energy projects such as hydrogen and LNG but there’s no way of knowing if the new legislation would consider LNG or hydrogen green jobs.
- It is immensely important that Albertans, specifically those in Calgary that will swing the election realize that electing the NDP would put in a government only able to offer token resistance at best against the Trudeau government’s plans.
- This has been highlighted by many including Calgary MP Michelle Rempel Garner who connected the dots and pointed out that no matter what Rachel Notley says, it has the potential to hurt her.
- At the end of the day, Trudeau’s wedge just might have just set one of the major flashpoints of the coming 2023 Alberta election.
- Supplementals:
Firing Line
- An editorial from the Globe and Mail aims to look at the reasons behind the astronomical inflation that we've seen over the past couple of years. In it, they point to something that the rest of the media has been reluctant to talk about: Canada's practice of supply management.
- There have been lots of conspiracy theories swirling around of late about what is behind the increase in food prices, which have outpaced the general rate of inflation. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP, remains convinced, without citing anything approaching solid proof, that corporate greed – so-called greed-flation – is the culprit.
- Instead the editorial points to agriculture supply management and its “marketing boards” whose aims are not so much about marketing as they are to constrain supply, to dampen innovation and competition – and to keep prices elevated.
- The House of Commons agriculture committee is busily digging into the issue, calling grocery industry executives in for a grilling in December. Absent from the invitee list was anyone from, say, the Canadian Dairy Commission, who might be able to give a detailed explanation to Canadians as to why it felt the need to raise its benchmark price three times in 12 months.
- Politicians of all partisan stripes are quite studiously averting their attention from any scrutiny of supply management. It’s unsurprising but still disappointing that no party is willing to challenge the entrenched interests of farmers benefiting from supply management.
- The media, too, is myopic for the most part, as evidenced by the recent ruffled feathers over eye-popping prices for chicken. A host of possible reasons were cited, price-gouging chief among them. Nowhere was there a mention of the supply management system that props up poultry prices.
- Looking at recent inflation statistics reveals some interesting patterns. The price of fresh or frozen chicken purchased in stores, for one example, rose 10.8 per cent last year through to December, slightly higher than the overall inflation rate of food purchased in stores, 10.6 per cent. Dairy product prices in stores rose even more, jumping 11.8 per cent. Egg prices rose 19 per cent. All of those supply-managed foods outpaced the general rise in inflation of 6.9 per cent for that time period.
- By contrast, pork prices actually fell slightly over the first 11 months of last year. That’s not just a matter of timing. Pork prices also have not kept pace with inflation since the disruptive arrival of the pandemic in early 2020, and remain the cheapest meat cuts that one can pick up at the grocery store. Egg prices, meanwhile, have risen by more than double the general inflation rate over that same span.
- One look around a local grocery and anyone will note that prices have gone up by far more than the average of 7 or so % that the government keeps quoting, with certain products going up by about 50%, as seen in a viral TikTok that made the waves over social media this past week.
- Sylvain Charlebois, director of the agri-food analytics lab at Dalhousie University, argues that the decisions of the dairy board, among others, should be spelled out in detail for the public. Prof. Charlebois contends that governance needs to be changed as well, ending the spectacle of the dairy industry deciding how consumers can best benefit the dairy industry.
- There should be a broader debate about the benefits of supply management. As a policy to keep the family farm intact, supply management has been a notable failure. Still, without some sort of market restrictions, the dairy industry, at the very least, would be unlikely to hold out against U.S. competitors with lower energy costs and greater economies of scale. Prof. Charlebois and others believe that the system can be reformed, with greater – but still circumscribed – exposure to competition that would spur more innovation.
- It may be that Canadians, fully informed, will agree that the benefits of supply management outweigh the costs. But that overdue debate needs to start with the recognition that Canadian consumers pay that bill.
- Supplementals:
Quote of the Week
“They [being the Conservatives] 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.” - 2015 Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau on the purchase of the F-35 fighter jet.
Word of the Week
Vigilante - a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate.
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Show Data
Episode Title: The Dawson Posse
Teaser: The Trudeau Liberals finally decide to buy F-35s, BC residents are fed up with rural property crime, and Trudeau tries wedge politics on Alberta’s climate policy. Also, the media ignores the effects of supply management on grocery inflation.
Recorded Date: January 14, 2023
Release Date: January 15, 2023
Duration: 55:18
Edit Notes: Dawson quote fixing
Podcast Summary Notes
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Duration: XX:XX