{"id":60698,"date":"2025-06-10T14:26:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T14:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2025\/06\/10\/lockheed-jet-deal-to-cost-canada-more-than-27-billion-auditor-says\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T14:26:03","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T14:26:03","slug":"lockheed-jet-deal-to-cost-canada-more-than-27-billion-auditor-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2025\/06\/10\/lockheed-jet-deal-to-cost-canada-more-than-27-billion-auditor-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Lockheed jet deal to cost Canada more than $27 billion, auditor says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div><p> \n<br \/><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Interprovincial trade scare called &#039;absolute garbage&#039;\" width=\"1080\" height=\"608\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wE9D-7tCyWE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p> Canada\u2019s purchase of 88 <\/p>\n<p>                Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 fighter jets<\/p>\n<p>                 will cost far more than projected, and the country faces a potential shortage of qualified pilots to fly them, a government audit has found. <\/p>\n<p> The overall cost estimate of the order has jumped to $27.7 billion, almost 50 per cent more than originally anticipated, Canadian <\/p>\n<p>                Auditor General<\/p>\n<p>                 Karen Hogan said in a report. There will be at least $5.5 billion in additional costs for infrastructure upgrades and advanced weapons, she said. <\/p>\n<p> Construction of new facilities for the jets and their crew is more than three years behind schedule, Hogan found, and may not be ready until 2031. With the first F-35s scheduled to arrive in Canada in 2028, interim hosting solutions will add costs. <\/p>\n<p> The audit comes as Mark Carney\u2019s government <\/p>\n<p>                examines the fighter-jet deal<\/p>\n<p>                . Carney ordered a <\/p>\n<p>                review of the contract<\/p>\n<p>                 in March \u2014 one of his first moves as prime minister \u2014 after United States President Donald Trump put tariffs on Canadian goods and made a series of menacing comments about <\/p>\n<p>                turning the country into the 51st state<\/p>\n<p>                . <\/p>\n<p> Carney has pledged that Canada will direct more of its <\/p>\n<p>                military spending toward domestic production<\/p>\n<p>                 or to other allies. \u201cWe should no longer send three-quarters of our defence capital spending to America,\u201d he said. But he hasn\u2019t said he would cancel or reduce the F-35 contract, either. Canada is also trying to join Europe\u2019s rearmament program, which suggests <\/p>\n<p>                Saab AB\u2019s Gripen aircraft<\/p>\n<p>                 may also be added to Canada\u2019s air force. <\/p>\n<p> Canada is buying the F-35s as a member of the Joint Strike Fighter program, a group of countries that also includes the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway. <\/p>\n<p> Canada\u2019s military estimated in 2022 that the F-35 order would cost $19 billion, but Hogan said that was based on information from a few years earlier. The Joint Strike Fighter program had since produced new estimates \u201cwhich were showing that costs of the aircraft had already increased substantially,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n<ul class=\"related_links\">\n<li>Marc Parent: Buy Canadian has to extend to aerospace and defence if Canada is to defend its borders<\/li>\n<li>Jet maker Bombardier warns Canada that F-35 review may backfire<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> The cost increase was primarily caused by rising inflation, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, and heightened demand for munitions, the audit found. <\/p>\n<p> Hogan\u2019s report says the Department of National Defence believes the planned training program won\u2019t produce enough pilots by 2032-33 for full operational capability. \u201cNational Defence should take immediate action to complete all plans and schedules for the project to bring the CF-35A aircraft into service and implement them in a timely manner.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> Bloomberg.com <\/p>\n\n<br \/>Lockheed jet deal to cost Canada more than $27 billion, auditor says<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>2025-06-10 14:26:03<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Canada\u2019s purchase of 88 Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 fighter jets will cost far more than projected, and the country faces a potential shortage of qualified pilots to fly them, a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital\/financialpost\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0611-mg-f35.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/60699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}