Military Priorities
On Friday the Conservatives again announced the purchase of four strategic lift aircraft from Boeing for $3.4 billion.
Now, these are good aircraft if you want to send men halfway across the planet for some reason, and by itself this doesn't look like all that bad a purchase, but this "new era" has a troubling side note when put into context. In this case, the fact that the navy is having trouble buying fuel for its ships.
The Canadian navy is pulling three ships out of planned NATO exercises off Nova Scotia next week, citing a lack of funding.
There's no money for the warships to join the U.S. and German ships, navy officials said Friday.
. . .
The decision to tie up the three ships follows a decision two weeks ago to cancel a scheduled sovereignty exercise.
HMCS Halifax was supposed to patrol off Newfoundland, but the navy couldn't afford fuel. Hours after CBC News aired the story, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said $3.5 million would be made available and the ship was ordered to sea.
Now, it seems to me the ability to put ships out to sea guarding our rather large coastline would make better sense from a defense perspective than flying a few troops thousands of miles away. A back of the envelope calculation means that the purchase price of one plane could fuel 200 patrols. It's not really that simple of course, but I wonder when the Conservative government went on it's military spending spree this spring what kinds of missions they had in mind for the "new era", and if guarding our coastlines and borders rated as highly as sending troops into hot spots far from home.
