Grounding the legendary Snowbirds until some vague date in the next decade is yet another example of Canada's 'can't do government.'
Defence Minister David McGuinty on Tuesday made official warnings from Conservative MP Fraser Tolmie that this summer will be the last tour of duty for the iconic red-and-white Canadair CT-114 Tutor jets and their highly-trained pilots and support personnel based in Moose Jaw.
For more than five decades they've performed at more than 2,700 air shows, thrilling a North American audience estimated at 14 million, both in their classic nine-plane close-in formation and in manoeuvres such as the head-on cross, when two solo planes speed toward one another at close to 600 km/h, avoiding a collision at the last moment by a mere 10 metres. This shared experience for millions of Canadians going back generations has been a source of pride and a unifying symbol in a country that has fewer and fewer of them.
McGuinty announced the Snowbirds' Tutor jets will be replaced by CT-157 Siskin II turboprops but gave no completion date, other than they're 'expected to be operational in the early 2030s.' Given Canada's history of military procurement fiascoes, we'll believe it when we see it.
Infamous examples range from the replacement of Canada's ancient Sea King helicopters, to the purchase of four second-hand, problem-prone British subs, to the auditor general's scathing report last year on the billions of dollars already wasted because of poor decision-making in Canada's planned purchase of U.S. F-35 fighter jets to replace Canada's CF-18s.
What the multi-year grounding of the Snowbirds McGuinty announced really speaks to is that previous Liberal and Conservative governments failed to heed decades of warnings that the Tudor jets were past their operational lifespan and needed to be replaced. In 2021, the Trudeau government approved a $30 million plan to keep the Tutor jets flying until 2030, but that obviously failed as well.
A competent procurement program to replace the Snowbird jets would have started years ago and been completed by now, with no need for a multi-year shutdown of the program. It's a warning to taxpayers about what could go wrong as the feds spend $150 billion annually reaching Canada's NATO commitment to allocate 5% of GDP to defence by 2030.
