What's Canada Buying? January 22, 2013

• MOAR LAV III upgrade news, this time from Brampton, Ontario and Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia!
• F-35 Tug o’ War (1)  Didn’t take this former public servant long to talk  “The man who for seven years oversaw billions of dollars in military contracts and purchasing is defending the way he and his Defence Department staff managed the F-35 stealth fighter program.  In his first interview since retiring from the public service on Jan. 2, Dan Ross, the former assistant deputy minister of defence materiel, blames the Harper government’s culture of secrecy, and a lack of accountability at all levels of government, for the project having run so disastrously off the runway.  At the same time, Ross provides an explosive window into a military procurement system that has ground to a halt thanks to infighting between bureaucrats, and which he says threatens to leave the country’s men and women in uniform without the equipment they need.  And he firmly believes that – Conservative government review or not – the F-35 will be Canada’s next fighter aircraft, unless politics get in the way.  “At the end of the day, the Royal Canadian Air Force will fly F-35s,” Ross says. “If we have an Air Force that flies fighters.” ….”
• F-35 Tug o’ War (2)  “Despite the government’s decision to compare costs and capabilities of four modern fighter jets with the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth warplane, nearly half of Canadians said they believe the government will go ahead with the $45.8-billion F-35 fleet procurement anyway, according to a new poll by Forum Research.  The Forum poll survey of 1,600 voting-age Canadians also found that even though the government argued that an independent review released in December confirmed its own estimates of F-35 costs were accurate, two-thirds of Canadians remain convinced that Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary-Southwest, Alta.) and his Cabinet misled Canadians with estimates they released prior to the federal election in 2011.  The survey, conducted last week after MPs and Canadians had a month to digest a mountain of reports and documents the government tabled in the House of Commons before a two-month Parliamentary recess, found that 48 per cent of respondents believe the government will go ahead with the F-35 project regardless of a review of other new-generation fighters now in production ….”
  
• Wanted:  someone to supply lab services for cleaning up contaminated soil in Goose Bay
  
• Wanted:  IT types to help CBSA manage border security, trade issues better - more from the MERX listing here, and part of the Statement of Work here.
  

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