Victoria-based Viking Air believes it can save the Canadian government $1.5 billion and put as many as 350 people to work if it can convince Ottawa it has the right plan to upgrade and modernize the country's aging fleet of Buffalo search-and-rescue aircraft.
But Viking, which manufactures the popular Twin Otter aircraft at plants in Victoria and Calgary, says the federal government doesn't appear to want to hear about it.
"A week or two ago we were told, full stop, 'we'll get back to you' and the next thing we hear is a report that [Defence Minister Peter] MacKay has a $3-billion program," he said.
According to a Canwest News Service report, that $3-billion program looks to be a sole-source contract for the purchase of new search-and-rescue aircraft -- specifically an Italian C-27J aircraft built in the U.S. The deal would see $1.5 billion for aircraft and another $1.5 billion for long-term maintenance.
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/business/story.html?id=a5f3a700-4bad-444c-a434-6ea8f9420e2b
The United States has traditionally used defense-spending as a mean to boost their internal economy. But, since the days of the Mulroney government, Canada has consistently eroded it's manufacturing base, becoming more and more dependant on the "hewers of wood, drawers of water" model of unsustainable development.
The result has been the acquisition of inferior products (as witnessed by the BC Liberal government's purchase of German-built ferries - http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/11/18/Ferries/ )
And the Harper government appears to be determined to continue with this folly.
Stumble It!
Its long past time for our governments, federal and provincial, to be specifying that preference will be given to domestic production when making expenditures on equipment or major projects, and then doing just that, unless there are NO viable alternatives. You may be sure that most other countries will be and the U.S. does and has for some time.
I'm not convinced that the present so called "economic meltdown" has not been planned for many years and that the Reform Party has not been a long standing part of the plan.
The deregulated money creation powers of the banks has been used by the multinational corporate mafia to destroy the industrial base of countries, buy control of the world's resources and of governments to sell off their own peoples, and now they're in position to let the imaginary monetary system self destruct as they have all the real power and economic control in their hands.
Ed Deak.
Peter Schiff is one such person:
http://www.corrupt.org/news/peter_schif ... led_for_it