Comment by hylaride

> You are being deliberately obtuse

You’re giving vague responses with no data to back it up, so that’s a rude statement.

> The argument is that you cannot make a apples-to-apples dollars-to-dollar price comparison to see how much it will cost your country to outsource production of hardware

Yes you can. The F-35 flyway costs ($82m) are similar to the Saab Gripen ($85m) despite the F-35 being superior in almost every way (the one notable exception being the Gripen is good at flying off of more rustic environments). The simple reason is scale. There are similar numbers for French planes and they’re finally giving up for their next-gen planes and working with the rest of Europe. Sweden is all but throwing in the towel going forwards, too.

You’re essentially saying Canada should pay more for less to support jobs and expertise that will produce less and cost more.

Canada has been a net contributor in the F-35 program (as have most of the other countries that have purchased it).

> With the benifit of hindsight, we know that Diefenbaker's decision spelled the death of Canada's aerospace industry

Canada has the third largest aerospace industry after the EU and USA (though we go toe to toe with Brazil). Your argument is invalid.

> The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets

This is not true, though the numbers are fuzzy depending on if one includes R&D and number of planes built - so we could spend all day arguing on this. But the engines were languishing in development hell, so we ultimately didn’t know what the final bill would have been (the TV series show them as “this close” to being done, but that wasn’t the case in real life).

The Avro arrow was a really good long range interceptor, but that was about it. The CBC miniseries made it out to be this amazing plane that was better at everything, which it was not. The Voodoo that was bought instead was arguably inferior in policing Canada’s north, but was much better suited for all the other roles the Air Force participated in, especially European NATO commitments. We would have had to buy another plane anyways, but the one plane already stretched Canada’s resources. We’re just not big enough to do that.

> Their engineers moved to America or left their careers behind. The cost to Canada of buying American jets was considerably more than the sticker price of those jets

There absolutely was a brain drain to the US for many of the engineers. As I mentioned in another post, cancelling the Arrow was arguably the right decision for the wrong reasons, but because it was done for the wrong reasons there wasn’t any thought put through on focusing on another project. A huge chunk of the blame lies with the executives at avro canada, who over-extended trying to do everything (plane, engine, etc) and then got burned playing with politics.