Buying the F-35 is the right move for Canada, but that was also the case seven and a half years ago when Trudeau cynically opposed it.
Since we can’t go back in time, the best time to make up for a mistake in the past is to address it today.
Canada should have bought the F-35 fighter jet many years ago.
If we had, then we would actually have the advanced jets, something that would certainly be reassuring to Canadians amid a dramatically more dangerous national security environment.
But, we didn’t get them years ago, so the federal government announcing yesterday that they would purchase 88 F-35s is the next best thing.
With that said, it’s still important that Justin Trudeau be held accountable for the fact that our country lacks any advanced fighter jets – and will lack them until the first delivery of F-35s commences in 2026.
This delay – which represents a significant security weakness for our country – exists because Justin Trudeau chose to play politics with the F-35 nearly seven and a half years ago.
Trudeau campaigned against the already long-delayed purchase of the F-35, and then cancelled when he got into office.
And he was glad to use it as a political wedge issue on his way to the Prime Minister’s chair:
F-35s pic.twitter.com/3l8HhTXelE
— James Moore (@JamesMoore_org) January 9, 2023
The problem with Trudeau isn’t that he makes mistakes, it’s that he makes the same mistakes over and over again.
Of course, to him this wasn’t a mistake.
He clearly places low priority on ensuring Canada has an adequate national defense, and turning the F-35 into a political issue was part (a small part) of his winning 2015 campaign, so he probably sees it as no issue at all.
But for Canada, there is a real issue, and it’s the way Trudeau puts his short-term political interests ahead of everything else.
Whether it’s national defense, government spending, the abuse of government power, the energy sector, and more, Trudeau will gladly do significant damage to Canada’s long-term prospects if he can gain some sort of small temporary political win.
It’s the attitude of someone who never had to face real economic difficulty, and who always had someone there to bail out his mistakes and boost his ego.
Unfortunately for Canadians, we are left to pick up the pieces and deal with the consequences of an increasingly unsafe, divided, stagnating, and vulnerable nation.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – Twitter
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