New procurement approach forces DND to ditch 6 + years planning/research

OTTAWA – National Defence was forced to throw over six years’ worth of research and planning for its desperately-needed fixed-wing search and rescue plane out the window when the Harper government decided to take a different procurement approach.

A briefing prepared for the former associate defence minister, Kerry-Lynne Findlay, spells out in detail how the project, which has been grinding its way through the defence bureaucracy since 2004, was being further sidelined.

The note was written by the department’s now former deputy minister, Robert Fonberg and obtained by The Canadian Press under access to information legislation.

The program, first announced by Paul Martin’s Liberals in 2004, is meant to replace two different fleets of aircraft — one of them almost 50-years-old — with a single modern formation of possibly 15 planes.

Defence and public works officials could not say last week when a tender will be issued, despite pledges since 2008 to make the purchase the military’s “top priority.”

The most recent Conservative budget moved over $3.1 billion of capital spending on the military off into future years and the government won’t say whether the rescue plane is among those affected.