Canada’s military procurement, sole-source or not, has always been ridiculous and inherently political.
16 Replies to “Let’s be Honest”
The first of many “delays” I’m sure.
Davie will do okay on this deal after the collect damages. I thought the Liberals would want to consolidate their Quebec gains by letting the contract run its course. Remember when Mulroney gave the F18 maintenance contact to the high bidder in Montreal despite Winnipeg having a lower cost bid, a functioning facility and a recommendation from the bureaucracy. That helped launch the Reform Party.
“Canada’s military procurement, sole-source or not, has always been ridiculous and inherently political.”
The bad news is you re quite right: it has ever been thus.
The good (?) news is: we are not alone. Imagine the exponentially greater horror of US military procurement.
“Canada’s military procurement, sole-source or not, has always been ridiculous and inherently political.”
The bad news is you are quite right; it has ever been thus.
The good (?) news is: we are not alone. Imagine the exponentially greater horror of US military procurement.
Sorry for the two postings.
OFP!*
* Operator finger problems.
Let me guess…it’s only going to cost $600 million in cancellation penalties to kill this deal.
I was an engineering procurement office in the old Department of Supply and Services for three years. I knew I had to get out of there when the first question asked by the higher ups was ” what is in it for Quebec?” And this was a “major crown project” worth over 100 million at the time 30 years ago.
The defence of the Dominion will not be one more iota secured by these penalties for delay, but the power and wealth of the Quebec Liberal establishment will be, which is all that matters to the government of the day.
Funny part is I know a fair number of military members who voted liberal because Justin was going to be better for the military according to them. No seriously that’s what they believe.
“… Imagine the exponentially greater horror of US military procurement.”
But the US military does get exponentially greater performance from it’s military procurement, too.
The most embarrassing moments I can recall were during the Chretien era when Russian vessels would enter Canadian waters in the arctic, and the CDN forces would fly over with a helicopter and drop a Canadian flag on the deck. Lucky the flag didn’t get caught up in the chopper’s tail rotor! Imagine having to get a ride home on Russian destroyer where no one speaks English and the vodka tastes like naphtha!
remember that for sure.
Mulroney….. ah, the uber Conservative front and centre in the move to help his buddy peter munk at Barrick gold steal the mining rights from the (hapless as it turns out) David Walsh who started bre-x gold. the `salting`happened without Walsh`s knowledge, the perps only needed an active prospecting site in which to carry out their scheme. his was convenient.
but mulroney didn`t know any of that, no one on the òutside` did. but his actions exposed his true colours.
mulroney, who gave us NAFTA, phase one of the process of, here it is again, putting that 99% of resources in the hands of a minuscule few.
mulroney the Conservative.
“But the US military does get exponentially greater performance from it’s military procurement, too.”
The US military is 2.2 million, counting regular and reserves. If we compare our own military, we get a number of 120,000 (but only by including the Canadian Rangers and everybody on the supplementary reserve list).
So with just over nine times our population, the US has a military over 18 times the size of ours.* Not surprising they’d get exponentially greater performance.
(And their military is smaller than it has been in quite some time too.)
* I’m not suggesting our military needs to be 250,000 simply on the basis of such ratios, that would be simplistic. It should be evident that our military is far too small though. We should have a regular military of at least 100,000. Right now, the average Canadian hears we have about (regular) 68,000 “troops” and thinks that’s our “army” when in fact it’s everybody – navy, army, air force. The regular Canadian Army numbers less than 23,000 all up. That’s a national disgrace.
No. As with lots of other programs that produced very good weapons and equipment. A-10, F-14, F-15, F-16 fighters and fighter bombers. Apache, Cobra, UH-1, Chinook, Blackhawk helicopters. M-1 tank. Lots of successful warships. Effective small arms e.g. the M-16 family certainly isn’t perfect but it’s long-running and ubiquitous because it’s good.
Yes, it’s because they have an exponentially bigger military that their procurement projects get them the exponentially greater horrors that you mentioned, and the exponentially greater performance that I said goes with it.
Size matters, for good and ill. There are some things that tend to work better when you are doing them on a smaller scale. Other things needed a larger scale to be done at all, such as building your own warships. Designing and developing a new rifle for the Rangers was too expensive for us to undertake, but if we really wanted to, we could paid over the odds and have it done in time to replace the Lee Enfields they are carrying now. Designing and building a warship is exponentially more complicated than a rifle and no matter how much we want to, how much we are willing to spend it’s not something we can do. If we start developing the infrastructure and knowledge base for a shipbuilding industry that can do it, we might become able to design and build warships in time to develop the replacements for ships that we need to buy from someone else right now when they have worn out their hulls in twenty to thirty years.
The first of many “delays” I’m sure.
Davie will do okay on this deal after the collect damages. I thought the Liberals would want to consolidate their Quebec gains by letting the contract run its course. Remember when Mulroney gave the F18 maintenance contact to the high bidder in Montreal despite Winnipeg having a lower cost bid, a functioning facility and a recommendation from the bureaucracy. That helped launch the Reform Party.
“Canada’s military procurement, sole-source or not, has always been ridiculous and inherently political.”
The bad news is you re quite right: it has ever been thus.
The good (?) news is: we are not alone. Imagine the exponentially greater horror of US military procurement.
“Canada’s military procurement, sole-source or not, has always been ridiculous and inherently political.”
The bad news is you are quite right; it has ever been thus.
The good (?) news is: we are not alone. Imagine the exponentially greater horror of US military procurement.
Sorry for the two postings.
OFP!*
* Operator finger problems.
Let me guess…it’s only going to cost $600 million in cancellation penalties to kill this deal.
I was an engineering procurement office in the old Department of Supply and Services for three years. I knew I had to get out of there when the first question asked by the higher ups was ” what is in it for Quebec?” And this was a “major crown project” worth over 100 million at the time 30 years ago.
The defence of the Dominion will not be one more iota secured by these penalties for delay, but the power and wealth of the Quebec Liberal establishment will be, which is all that matters to the government of the day.
Funny part is I know a fair number of military members who voted liberal because Justin was going to be better for the military according to them. No seriously that’s what they believe.
“… Imagine the exponentially greater horror of US military procurement.”
But the US military does get exponentially greater performance from it’s military procurement, too.
TheTooner: As with, just for one, the F-35?
http://aviationweek.com/defense/us-considers-72-new-f-15s-or-f-16s
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=1919
Mark
Ottawa
The most embarrassing moments I can recall were during the Chretien era when Russian vessels would enter Canadian waters in the arctic, and the CDN forces would fly over with a helicopter and drop a Canadian flag on the deck. Lucky the flag didn’t get caught up in the chopper’s tail rotor! Imagine having to get a ride home on Russian destroyer where no one speaks English and the vodka tastes like naphtha!
remember that for sure.
Mulroney….. ah, the uber Conservative front and centre in the move to help his buddy peter munk at Barrick gold steal the mining rights from the (hapless as it turns out) David Walsh who started bre-x gold. the `salting`happened without Walsh`s knowledge, the perps only needed an active prospecting site in which to carry out their scheme. his was convenient.
but mulroney didn`t know any of that, no one on the òutside` did. but his actions exposed his true colours.
mulroney, who gave us NAFTA, phase one of the process of, here it is again, putting that 99% of resources in the hands of a minuscule few.
mulroney the Conservative.
“But the US military does get exponentially greater performance from it’s military procurement, too.”
The US military is 2.2 million, counting regular and reserves. If we compare our own military, we get a number of 120,000 (but only by including the Canadian Rangers and everybody on the supplementary reserve list).
So with just over nine times our population, the US has a military over 18 times the size of ours.* Not surprising they’d get exponentially greater performance.
(And their military is smaller than it has been in quite some time too.)
* I’m not suggesting our military needs to be 250,000 simply on the basis of such ratios, that would be simplistic. It should be evident that our military is far too small though. We should have a regular military of at least 100,000. Right now, the average Canadian hears we have about (regular) 68,000 “troops” and thinks that’s our “army” when in fact it’s everybody – navy, army, air force. The regular Canadian Army numbers less than 23,000 all up. That’s a national disgrace.
No. As with lots of other programs that produced very good weapons and equipment. A-10, F-14, F-15, F-16 fighters and fighter bombers. Apache, Cobra, UH-1, Chinook, Blackhawk helicopters. M-1 tank. Lots of successful warships. Effective small arms e.g. the M-16 family certainly isn’t perfect but it’s long-running and ubiquitous because it’s good.
Yes, it’s because they have an exponentially bigger military that their procurement projects get them the exponentially greater horrors that you mentioned, and the exponentially greater performance that I said goes with it.
Size matters, for good and ill. There are some things that tend to work better when you are doing them on a smaller scale. Other things needed a larger scale to be done at all, such as building your own warships. Designing and developing a new rifle for the Rangers was too expensive for us to undertake, but if we really wanted to, we could paid over the odds and have it done in time to replace the Lee Enfields they are carrying now. Designing and building a warship is exponentially more complicated than a rifle and no matter how much we want to, how much we are willing to spend it’s not something we can do. If we start developing the infrastructure and knowledge base for a shipbuilding industry that can do it, we might become able to design and build warships in time to develop the replacements for ships that we need to buy from someone else right now when they have worn out their hulls in twenty to thirty years.