Liberals Would Have Us Believe Lightweight Lift Aircraft Are Heavyweight Lift Aircraft

On Tuesday January 30th, 2007 the Minister of Defence, Gordon O’Connor, cleared up any question of the heavy lift aircraft tender with one statement.

In answering Liberal Denis Coderre’s question regarding the contract being changed so that only one aircraft could meet the requirements, the Minister said:

Requirements are set by the military and they go through a process from a desk officer all the way to the Chief of the Defence Staff, and then they come to me. At that point I get the requirements from the military.

The military requirement was not changed after the Chief of the Defence Staff gave it to me. By the way, the weight I think was 39 tonnes and the aircraft we eventually selected lifts 85 tonnes.

(emphasis mine).

So let’s figure this out. Let’s say that the contract weight lift requirement was dropped to 35 tonnes to allow a second or third bid to be eligible, these options would be lifting LESS THAN HALF what the Boeing airplanes can lift.

Since the armed forces were not looking for a lightweight or middleweight lift aircraft, I think the arguments being made by opposition are simply baseless and the Boeing C18’s are clearly the king of heavy lift … twice over.

To accept other bids from aircraft that can lift 30 odd tonnes would be like a soccer mom buying a Volkswagon Golf instead of a Suburban. Oh sure, it can get our team to the game, but it would take two or even three trips to do it and when it comes to the troops putting their lives on the line, I would rather they get what they need as quickly as possible.

But the ulterior motive is that the Liberals would rather have a non Boeing company provide us with the aircraft because Boeing spreads the wealth around the country, whereas other contractors would focus much of the reinvestment in Quebec.

This ties in nicely to how Gilles Duceppe is looking for 60% of the Boeing reinvestment to be in Quebec as Quebec has 60% of the military contractors in Canada. Does Mr. Duceppe not see the hypocrisy of his request? He is trying to slam the government for not addressing the fiscal imbalance but he wants a completely disproportionate amount of the Boeing money in his province. He is starting to look like a ragged beggar with his hand out all the time.