Hon. Kerry-Lynne D. Findlay: Mr. Speaker, Lockheed Martin paid for all transportation costs for the F-35 model featured at the press conference held on July 16, 2010, in Ottawa. The Department of National Defence did not incur any costs for the transport of the model.

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The Green Party is the only truly global party, with Greens in 70 countries and elected Members of Parliament in Europe, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand. Together we work to press the nuclear super-powers to meet their obligations for disarmament, to reduce and eliminate the nuclear threat. We work to shift military budgets to peacekeeping and peace-building. We work to ensure the education, health protection and economic autonomy of women and girls around the world to address poverty and over-population.

Greens see the world as a planetary whole. We believe the essence of a strong security policy starts with addressing the single largest security threat to modern civilizations the climate crisis. As Gwynne Dyer pointed out in his book, Climate Wars, military establishments around the world are aware that the threat of increased political destabilization due to increased severity and frequency of severe climatic events warrants treating climate as a security threat. The spectre of millions of environmental refugees is a real and near-term reality, if we do not move aggressively to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Honouring binding multilateral treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol, is a measure of a nation’s reliability and integrity in the world. As the only nation to have ratified and then repudiated Kyoto, we have blotted our copy book in the community of nations. Our domestic fossil-fuel expansionist policies put us at odds with the International Energy Agency, the European Union, and more.

Meanwhile, addressing global disparities, working together as nation-states to improve the standard of living for all, is more than a free market issue. It requires equity, the rule of law, and enhanced global governance.

Defence policy needs to be nested in the context of how we see our role in the world. Increasingly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appears to defining our role in two ways trade and military hardware.

We are entering into cookie-cutter trade agreements with small (and in some cases corrupt) economies. Jordan, Panama, Colombia, with China yet to come. Our international posture is one of unquestioning support for Israel (I support the existence of the state of Israel, but think unquestioning cheer-leading is a disservice to peace in the region), and joining NATO missions with zeal.

Meanwhile, we are sending the signal that diplomacy is a dwindling concern. For some time, the Harper Conservatives have been shrinking our embassy presence so that a Canadian in trouble in Nicaragua, for example, is told the closest Canadian presence is in Guatemala and in any event, your phone call is directed to a 1-800 emergency line in Ottawa. With the 2012 budget, we are selling off diplomatic residences a decision surely to be rated penny wise and pound foolish by successor governments.

The most high-profile domestic defence question is clearly the botched procurement process for the F-35s. In many ways the F-35 fighter jet is the perfect object lesson from former U.S. President and former General Dwight Eisenhower’s warning to beware of the “military-industrial complex.” Canada’s rationale for joining in the process in 1997 had little, if anything, to do with domestic security and everything to do with hoped-for aerospace contracts.

Under Liberal prime ministers Chrétien and Martin, Canada put up initial funds to participate (first $10-million in 1997 and then a further $150-million in 2001). Up until this point, the auditor general found no fault with the process and accountability of decision-making. It was beyond the scope of the auditor general’s report to investigate whether Canada needed the F35s. Just as it was beyond the auditor general’s responsibility to find out which of the political masters were aware of the various and repeated acts of incompetence and failures of due diligence he went on to report.

The auditor general recounted such a trail of violations in the fundamentals of normal procurement process that even seasoned Ottawa-watchers are stunned. The decisions were generally taken in reverse order. First came the decision, followed by inventing criteria to justify the decisions, and then, lastly the rationale. Not one, but two, departments were found to have failed in the exercise of basic due diligence. Both the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Department of Public Works and Government Services Canada (Public Works) were found to have fallen below the standard of due diligence. 

The essence of the AG report is not, as Defence Minister Peter MacKay now claims, that the AG found a novel way to add up the costs of the jets. The essence of the report is that Canadians were lied tofor years. Parliament was misled for years. And the whole F-35 project, from 2006 onwards, was typified by a litany of rogue decision-making. What we need to know is how it happened that two departments suspended judgment, cut corners, and violated process. One theory is that Public Works and DND were independently willing to abandon normal procurement rules. More likely, the orders came from the one in control of all departments the Prime Minister who wants to remake us as a warrior nation.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May represents Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.
Originally printed in the Hill Times.

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The mainstream media is marking its report cards for the one-year anniversary under Harper Conservative majority rule. The bromides are calming—the Globe and Mail editorial gives the Conservative majority a positive spin—“more ups than downs”—while its reporter, John Ibbitson, wrote a piece nearly oozing with reverence for the prime minister.

It is clear we all have our biases. I only entered politics back in 2006 because I feared what a Harper minority government would do to decades of environmental law and policy. I have been very critical of the cuts to climate science, retreat from Kyoto commitments, and sabotage of climate negotiations internationally since 2006. But with that bias out in the open, I believe the last year has been the most devastating in Canadian history for parliamentary democracy, for charter rights, to collective bargaining and trade union rights, for evidence-based public policy, and for environmental law and protection. And, of course, the damage to climate policy was accelerated.

Here’s the evidence:

1. Abuse of democracy: Every piece of government legislation introduced since the election has had time allocation applied to limit debate, smashing through historical records. Parliamentary committees have been meeting increasingly in secret. Omnibus legislation, forcing massive legislative changes through one bill, has been used, further depriving Parliament of adequate time to analyze and improve legislation. The auditor general’s report on the F-35 issue makes it clear that Parliament was not given accurate information about the cost of the fighter jets, even after the true cost was known within cabinet. No need to detail here the simmering scandal of electoral fraud and robocalls.
2. Charter rights: The omnibus crime bill included nine separate pieces of legislation. Many sections involving mandatory minimum sentences arguably violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As well, the new refugee law, C-31, will require political refugee claimants arriving by boat (or anything the minister deems as “irregular entry”) to face automatic internment for up to a year without access to judicial review. This will include children between 16 and 18.
3. Collective bargaining: The intervention by the federal Parliament into Air Canada labour disputes (twice) and Canada Post’s lock-out of its workers undermines labour rights. So, too, does the Conservative party-supported private member’s bill to impose more financial transparency on labour unions than on other professional groupings, such as law societies.
4. Control of information: The Harper majority government has been the most closed and non-transparent in history. The number of people working in the Prime Minister’s Office has expanded, with its now over $10 million per year budget. Most of the PMO staff are described as “information officers”. Their job is to block access to information. No public servants or government scientists can speak to the media without permission; neither can they speak to MPs.
5. Evidence-free decision making: Once again the omnibus crime bill must be mentioned. A “tough on crime” agenda was unhinged from the reality of falling crime rates. No amount of evidence from criminologists that mandatory minimums do not reduce crime rates, nor that it was unwise to pass the bill without estimates for the cost of new prisons, made a dent in the Conservative majority mantra that any opposition MP who objected was siding with criminals and showed no concern for victims. The budgetary cuts are now disproportionately targeting Statistics Canada. Who can deny that the Harper brand of Conservatism is an evidence-free zone?
6. Assault on the natural world: The gloves are off. Harper and company have taken aim at environmental groups and First Nations opposed to the Enbridge supertanker scheme calling them “radicals” and labelling MPs who oppose the project as “against Canada”. While selling out our resources to China, without national security checks, Stephen Harper has promised Beijing the Enbridge project will proceed. In order to achieve this goal, come hell or high water, environmental laws are being eviscerated. And the sweeping changes are concealed in C-38, the budget implementation bill. The National Energy Board will now have jurisdiction over endangered species and navigable waters, if they occur in the way of any proposed pipeline. Meanwhile, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is repealed (under C-38) with an entirely new approach to replace it. The new law will restrict the study of impacts of major projects to areas “under the legislative authority of Parliament”—confined to fish and migratory birds. Where, in the past, an environmental review at the federal level was the most rigorous and comprehensive, new federal reviews would be a joke by Third World standards. The removal of habitat protection under the Fisheries Act is also part of the budget bill. So too, repealing the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act. Meanwhile, $8 million has been freed up to harass environmental charities.

Canadians must not remain silent. It is not only one area of public policy or one ecosystem that is threatened. Canada, our values and our traditions, are at risk.

Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

Originally published in the Georgia Straight.

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“The Harper Conservatives were given their ‘strong mandate’ with the actual votes of 24.3 percent of Canadians,” said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Member of Parliament for Saanich-Gulf Islands.  “Thanks to our first past the post voting system, 39 percent of those who voted elected a majority Conservative parliament.  At the same time, there is doubt hanging over the results of some of the closer Conservative riding victories because of fraudulent voter suppression efforts and robocalls.”

Since the election, the Harper Conservatives have been found guilty in the In-and-Out campaign money-laundering scandal of 2006; they’ve admitted making fraudulent calls to undermine former Liberal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler;  they’ve tried to justify funnelling funds to Minister Tony Clement’s riding, claiming funds were to reduce congestion at the border, misleading parliament; Minister Christian Paradis has been found in conflict of interest; the disgraced Integrity Commissioner has been replaced by her compromised deputy, and many more “fishy” goings-on.

The Harper Conservatives have chosen to be tough on other people instead.  They have reversed their policy on the use of evidence obtained through torture; they have passed an omnibus crime bill that will tie up our courts and crowd our prisons; they are supporting a citizens’ arrest bill that the Canadian Bar Association fears will risk a shift to private security firms making arrests, and vigilante justice; they are destroying the long-gun registry and won’t hand over the data to Quebec, and they want to hold political refugee claimants over the age of 16 for up to one year without review. 

This year also saw one of the harshest reports from an Auditor General in living memory, finding that two departments, Public Works and National Defence, had failed in their duty of “due diligence” in the rush to purchase and oversell the benefits of the F-35 fighter jets.

“While the year has been scandal-plagued, the worst of Mr. Harper’s agenda has been the assault on the environment,” said May.  “No one voted Conservative in order to destroy the environment.  The Harper Conservatives did not warn Canadians a year ago that they planned to withdraw from Kyoto, which a majority support, and then kill the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.”

Canadians didn’t vote to shut down our Arctic research station and climate adaptation research, cease funding the Canadian Foundation on Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, and endanger our ability to measure ozone.

The Conservatives’ attacks on the Fisheries Act – taking away protection of fish habitat without consultation with scientists or First Nations – are unprecedented. At the same time, the Conservative propaganda campaign for pipelines and tankers has lacked the requisite balance and impartiality of a government awaiting a decision from a National Energy Board review panel. 

“In pursuit of their goal of putting risky oil supertankers on the BC coastline and building pipelines come hell or high water, the Harper Conservatives are destroying decades’ worth of environmental law in a distinctly fishy move,” said May.  “Sweeping changes to dozens of laws are being smuggled through the legislative process in Bill C-38.  Environmental Assessment law at the federal level is for all intents and purposes destroyed.

“Of all the offences during Mr. Harper’s first year of majority government, the cynically crafted omnibus Budget Implementation Bill C-38 is the worst,” said May.  “It is an abuse of parliamentary process and an abuse of democracy.  It is also an abuse of Canadians’ trust.”

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Re: “May should get her aircraft straight,” April 18.

The letter writer thinks I need to brush up on my jet knowledge. The attributes of the F-35 from my 2010 article came straight from the press material used by the minister of defence in his announcement.

As the recent report from the auditor general attests, the operational requirements for the purchase of replacement aircraft have never been set out – not to the House of Commons and not even to Public Works.

I am not sure where I should have looked for details of the operational requirements other than the sources I used. The essence of the failings identified by the auditor general is that no one in government could get their aircraft facts straight.

Elizabeth May
Member of Parliament Saanich-Gulf Islands

View the full original article >>

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Under Liberal Prime Ministers Chretien and Martin, Canada put up initial funds to participate–first $10 million in 1997, then a further $150 million in 2001. The 2012 Spring Report of the Auditor General of Canada finds no fault with the process and accountability of decision-making up to this time.

It should be noted that it is beyond the scope of the Auditor General’s report to investigate whether Canada needed the F-35s at all. Just as it was not part of the Auditor General’s mandate to find out which political masters were aware of the various and repeated acts of incompetence and failures of due diligence that he went on to report.

What the Auditor General (AG) did recount was such a trail of violations in the fundamentals of normal procurement process that even seasoned Ottawa-watchers are stunned. The decisions were generally taken in reverse order. First came the decision, followed by inventing criteria to justify the decisions, and then, lastly the rationale. Not one, but two, departments were found to have failed in the exercise of basic due diligence.

Both the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Department of Public Works and Government Services Canada (Public Works) were found to have fallen below the standard of due diligence. It is clear that Public Works tried.

Prior to the announcement of the F-35 purchase, Public Works repeatedly asked DND to identify ‘operational requirements’ of the fighter jets and to ‘provide a full justification’ for its choice. In May 2010, Public Works ‘questioned National defence’s assertion that no other aircraft met its mandatory requirements.’ (p. 23 of Ch. 2, AGReport).

The AG’s report is dry in its delivery, but reading between the lines, there is high drama lurking. Essentially, Public Works said ‘no deal’ without justification and background analysis.

Mysteriously, on June 1, 2010, Public Works offered an olive branch: it would okay the purchase so long as DND ‘provided a letter confirming National Defence’s requirement for a fifth generation fighter and confirming that the F- 35 is the only such aircraft available.’

The AG report continues, ‘The same day, National Defence provided such a letter. There were no other supporting documents… It is important to note that the term ‘fifth generation’ is not a description of an operational requirement’ (emphasis mine).

Additionally, the AG tells us that the touted industrial benefits were as illusory as the real price. The AG recounts that ‘prior to the signing of the various MOUs in 2002 and 2006, the ministers of Industry Canada and National Defence…were informed that industrial benefits could not be guaranteed in the JSF programme’ (p. 15). That was because, by the terms of all contracts between the Pentagon and the partner countries ‘partners cannot require prime contractors to provide work to companies in their countries.’ Later in the report, the AGnotes that (as if we could be surprised at this point) ‘in the majority of cases, only the most optimistic scenario was put forward’ related to potential benefits.

Meanwhile, the 2006 memorandum of understanding (MOU) took the project to a next phase beyond the research and project development among partners, moving it more irrevocably in the direction of buying the F-35s. For example, it was that document that made it clear that, even though Canada was a partner in the development of the Lockheed Martin F-35, no contracts to Canadian aerospace industries would be awarded unless Canada also purchased the planes. Amazingly, the AG found that Public Works never saw the 2006 MOU until December 2009.

Since the report came out, the Prime Minister has claimed that this was all normal. No money has been spent yet, he says, although $330 million is certainly serious money and it has been spent. Peter MacKay and junior Defence Minister Julian Fantino have back-tracked and tried to claim they never said that contracts had been signed for the 65 F-35s, although there are numerous public references to the contract, including Peter MacKay referring to the wording of the ‘$9 billion contract’ in answer to Ignatieff in Question Period.

The essence of the AG report is not, as MacKay now claims, that the AG found a novel way to add up the costs of the jets. The essence of the report is that Canadians were lied to for years. Parliament was misled. And the whole F-35 project, from 2006 onwards, was typified by a litany of rogue decision-making.

What we need to know is how it happened that two departments suspended judgement, cut corners, and violated process. One theory is that Public Works and DND were independently willing to abandon normal procurement rules. More likely, the orders came from the one in control of all departments: the Prime Minister who wants to remake Canada as a warrior nation.

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Elizabeth May is a lone voice in the wilderness and yet she has made her presence known in our riding far more than Gary Lunn who only appeared when there was a tree to be planted or a highway to open.

Elizabeth May cares and she is willing to stand up for what is right. The federal government under Harper is in a sad and sorry state when retirement for pensioners’ age is increased, the CBC is deprived and 20,000 people laid off so Harper can purchase fighter jets. For what purpose? Canada has come a long way from our peacekeeping roots.

It is a sad day for us all.

Lili Soleil-Garbutt
Sidney

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Re: “Heads should roll in Ottawa for F-35 fiasco,” April 5.

“This is the most distorted hijacking of a procurement process you could ever make.” So says Alan Williams, former DND assistant deputy minister for materiel about the path leading to the proposed replacement of CF-18s with F-35 fighter jets.

The military industrial complex which former general and U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower warned us of is notorious for wasteful public-private partnerships that can bankrupt nations and lead to dangerous levels of power and wealth for war profiteers. Jeff Davis’ March 21 article on Lockheed-Martin’s F-35 underlines the validity of this view.

There are real threats to future well-being and security, arising from the totally unsustainable way our economy operates. Our government tells us that industrial projects which jeopardize our future are in the “national interest.” Wasting billions of dollars on fighter jets that would be virtually useless for protecting Canada’s territory or for peacekeeping is supposedly also good for Canada.

Another world, another Canada, are possible. Elizabeth May got out her “Green scissors” to propose alternate ways to cut the deficit and meet real needs.

Jan Slakov
Salt Spring Island

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On the costs I wrote:

Like many military contracts in the US, the costs of the F-35 have spiralled and are way over budget.  In March 2010, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates told the Congress that it was “unacceptable” that the F-35 is 50% over-budget.  Costs of developing the new fighter jets is approaching $300 billion. With bureaucratic baffle-gab that takes your breath away, the Pentagon critique of the fighter jet programme concluded: “affordability is no longer embraced as a core pillar.”

On the question of whether the F35s met Canadian defence needs:

Peter MacKay enthused about the jets.  Lockheed Martin’s F-35 jets are exciting new toys.  They are so exciting that our government did not hold an open contracting process.  We only wanted these planes. They can take off and land on aircraft carriers. They have stealth coating.  They can engage in air to air combat and rely on mid-air re-fueling.  ….  We don’t have aircraft carriers.  We have no plausible security scenario in which air to air combat is anticipated.  (The Battle of Britain was a long time ago.) And stealth coating?  Are we planning a surprise invasion? 

True, our aging CF-18s need to be replaced.  Our large geography has always led to a priority choice for two-engine planes, so if a plane is in a remote spot and loses an engine, the pilot can get to a safe place to land.  The F-35s are single engine planes.  Asked what will happen if the engine fails, Peter MacKay replied “it won’t.” We need planes for search and rescue.  The F-35 is not appropriate for search and rescue.

My column concluded:

So, it seems Canada is spending money we don’t have for planes we don’t need. And it seems we are doing this to hold our place in some macho military solidarity with the Pentagon. The opportunity costs of $16 billion for fighter jets is enormous  — in lost opportunities to reduce poverty, create jobs, protect health care and fight climate change.  None of this has been debated or discussed in the House.  And it was not in the 2010 budget.   I will work with other parties to reverse this sale and direct priorities to those Canadians value.

So, I was still using the Harper $16 billion estimate.  But when the Parliamentary Budget Officer explained that those costs were off by about $10 billion or so, I believed him.  Stephen Harper attacked him.

The point is that not even willful blindness of the most acute variety can be pleaded by the Prime Minister in his attack on the Parliamentary Budget Officer.  If I knew the planes were being chosen without criteria or a proper open bidding process, that the whole project was a boondoggle and that Canada was going to be spending $25 billion on planes we did not need, so too did everyone else.

The Auditor General’s report should be required reading for every voter who thought Stephen Harper had the qualities of a wise manager of the public purse.

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On behalf of the Green Party of Canada, I would like to associate myself with every point made by the member for Toronto Centre. Also, I agree with the member for Windsor—Tecumseh that there are more facts to be uncovered and more information to be gained.

I have felt offended by hearing government members in the House claim that they have accepted, and that their departments have accepted, the findings of the Auditor General, when in black and white in the report of the Auditor General, it says very clearly, at page 31, chapter 2:

Both National Defence and Public Works and Government Services Canada disagree with our conclusion that they did not demonstrate due diligence in their respective roles in the replacement of the CF-18 jets

I believe there is a clear contradiction there. I know the Speaker will take time and consider carefully the points of the hon. member for Toronto Centre with which we agree on every syllable.

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