Military Lives Matter
In 1990 the Conservative government signed a contract for the excellent European-made EH-101 Cormorant Helicopters. The Canadian version was to be designated the CH-149. As soon as Liberal Jean Chrétien was elected Prime Minister, he cancelled the contract at the cost to Canadian taxpayers of a 478 million dollars termination penalty. Chrétien explained his decision by referring to the Cormorant as a “Cadillac”. I suppose in his view it is acceptable for Liberal cabinet ministers to be chauffeured around in taxpayer funded Cadillac automobiles but it is too good for Canadian Forces members, who put their lives at risk every day, to be afforded the safety of a helicopter equivalent.
When Chrétien was replaced by Liberal Paul Martin in 2003 a contract was signed to purchase a supposedly cheaper U.S. made Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone helicopter that was still only in the design stage. Big mistake to select an unproven weapon for our troops. Subsequent add-ons of weaponry and electronics added to the maximum weight of the CH-148 helicopter and required the design and testing of more powerful engines. That in itself necessitated a major re-engineering of this Liberal Party helicopter at ever increasing costs. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Rideau Institute published a report on this purchase titled “The Worst Procurement in the History of Canada”.
In the 2020 crash of the CH-148 that killed six members of the Canadian Armed Forces it was claimed that the flight testing by the manufacturer was accepted at face value by senior members of the Canadian Armed Forces without doing their own testing. By extension, the flight crew who operated this machine unwittingly became test pilots themselves when they attempted a standard manoeuvre that ended badly, costing them their lives.
This all goes to show the fallacy of the Liberal Party’s policy of selecting a person without any military experience to fill the position of Minister of National Defence, just to fill a gender gap in the number of Cabinet appointments. We have seen a similar situation played out with the selection of a non-European to fill the position on Minister of Transport, and the ensuing chaos in the airline, travel, and currently in the ocean shipping areas. Powered flight, motorized ground transport, and motorized ocean shipping are all inventions and developments of Europeans and their descendants in North America. Administration of these matters should remain in the hands of Europeans and not in the hands of some monkey faced immigrant whose ethnic group’s traditional method of transportation was by camel.
Regarding the Liberal Party’s recent Cabinet shuffle, it makes about as much sense as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic after it struck the iceberg. Some rats have already started deserting the Liberal ship, sensing that it is a lost cause.
Fred Barrett Woodward
Editor