Take a minute to send a letter to the NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, NDP Defence Critic Lindsay Mathyssen, and all NDP MPs calling on them to start raising questions about the Liberal’s fighter jet plans.
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BACKGROUND
The Liberals are moving towards acquiring 33% more F-35’s than even Harper’s Conservatives had planned to purchase. But the NDP has been largely silent as the Liberals look set to break their promise on the costly warplane the NDP have long opposed.
The 2015 Liberal election platform boldly proclaimed: “We will not buy the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber.”
Since guaranteeing they would not purchase the F-35, the Liberals have quietly moved to ensure its acquisition is a fait accompli. They have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to remain part of the consortium developing the F-35 and have rejected other fighter jets. (Saab’s Gripen remains part of Canada’s jet competition but, it’s unlikely Ottawa would buy a Swedish warplane in the face of US and NATO “interoperability” pressures.)
Amidst devastating flooding in British Columbia and Newfoundland, the Liberals appear set to spend tens of billions of dollars on a warplane that consumes 5600 liters of carbon-intensive fuel per hour. Purchasing a large fleet of F-35s locks in greenhouse gas emissions decades after Canada has committed to attaining net zero while simultaneously siphoning off resources needed to mitigate the climate crisis.
It is time for the NDP to call on the Parliamentary Budget Officer to assess the full lifecycle cost of purchasing 88 F-35s and request government release its estimate of the greenhouse gases likely to be emitted by these jets.
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This action is co-initiated by the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, World Beyond War Canada, Just Peace Advocates and the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace (VOW)
To find out more about the campaign to stop the Trudeau government’s planned fighter jet purchase visit: Nofighterjets.ca
Graphic provided by No Fighter Jets Coalition.
#NoNewFighterJets
