I was reading up on the now-finalized purchase of Boeing C-17 heavy airlift by the government. I see that the USAF is allowing us to cut in on its current order. That's most gracious on its part. Or maybe it's getting a bit fed up with schlepping our tanks 'n' stuff around.
Not everyone was thrilled by the news. One man took time from his busy schedule of marching for Hezbollah to denounce it:
"We believe you can lease the aircraft you need for this role," said Denis Coderre, the Liberal Party’s defense critic. "It doesn’t make financial sense to purchase these planes."
Aside from the fact that Coderre is a blithering idiot, there are plenty of good reasons to buy the planes, as enumerated in this Globe and Mail comment thread on the same story (to my surprise, it was about 70% in favor).
I'd completely forgotten about it, but this commenter reminded me of one of the perils of depending on outside assistance:
in one example in the late 1990s we used a foreign owned and registered cargo ship to return sensitive communications and other military equipment to canada from a mission abroad. a contract dispute arose between the canadian government and the owner of the ship while the ship was at sea. the owner ordered the captain to stay at sea and to not sail into montreal harbour and to not deliver his cargo until the dispute was resolved. needless to say, a navy ship went out and had to escort the freighter back into canadian waters (after we boarded it and took control of it). i worked in the ops centre and witnessed this whole fiasco unfold.
It actually happened in August of 2000; as I recall, commandos (either JTF-2 or a specialized Navy team) had to rappel down from helicopters to seize the ship. Most likely the prospect of having our decrepit Sea King choppers hovering overhead so terrified the crew that they offered no resistance.
More on the incident here.