The NDP’s belated call to scrap the F-35 contract is a damning comment on Jagmeet Singh’s leadership. This cautious response to a rapidly shifting political terrain also includes an outrageous sop to the military industrial complex.
On February 25 I asked the NDP leader if he’d reconsider paying tens of billions of dollars to a US arms giant for offensive fighter jets as part of his stated desire to take a hardline in response to Donald Trump’s threats. Singh spent over a minute responding to my question but refused to answer. While seeking to portray himself as the ‘get tough on Trump’ candidate, Singh was unwilling to even say the party could reconsider paying huge sums to Lockheed Martin for 88 F-35s. To make his cautiousness even more absurd, the NDP has effectively opposed the F-35 contract, which is to cost $19 billion upfront and $70 billion over the life cycle.
The answer wasn’t simply off the cuff. I arrived half an hour early and had a conversation with Singh’s assistant in which I told her the two questions I hoped to ask.
Two weeks later I asked Yves Francois Blanchet basically the same question I had asked Singh. Last Tuesday the Bloc Québécois leader said he was open to canceling the F-35 contract in response to Trump’s belligerence. Blanchet expressed concern about a “switch off controlled in the US” for Canada’s expensive fighter jets.
In a sign that the issue was ripe, my Blanchet clip was viewed by over 200,000 times on social media, which is a surprisingly large number for an exchange in French.
To be fair to Singh, days before my question to Blanchet Postmedia reporter David Pugliese published a story discussing the US having an effective “kill switch” over the warplanes. Additionally, Michael Byers published a column in the Globe and Mail detailing some nationalist reasons to oppose the F-35 deal.
Also on Tuesday, thousands began responding to a Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, Just Peace Advocates and World Beyond War email campaign to Mark Carney and the leaders of the other political parties. It called for the F-35 contract to be scrapped and to “Stop Canada’s plan to spend billions on U.S.-made & controlled weapons of war.”
On Thursday former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy added his voice to a rapidly growing number of Canadians speaking out on the F-35. That day Portugal also announced it was abandoning a plan to purchase the F-35s. The government cited concerns about US reliability and control over the planes’ logistics and parts.
Amidst the mounting pressure, defence minister Bill Blair told CBC on Friday that Carney asked him to reconsider the F-35 deal. The news made international headlines and has hit Lockheed Martin’s stock.
In effect, Canada’s new investment banker prime minister outflanked the leader of a social democratic party polling under 15%. In a widely circulated YouTube interview Saturday morning Brent Patterson and I discussed the NDP brass’ caution amidst a rapidly changing political terrain.
On Sunday the NDP released a sloppily put together statement (they rewrote the headline after publishing) saying the government should cancel the F-35 deal and its contract for 16 Boeing P-8A Poseidon Multi-Mission Aircraft. It notes “At a time when Donald Trump has threatened not just workers and jobs, but Canada’s very sovereignty, it’s a matter of national security that our defence technology not be controlled by the United States. That’s why we’ll cancel the F-35 contract, and build the fighter jets Canada needs in Canada, using Canadian workers.”
Simultaneously, NDP defence critic Lindsay Mathyssen released a statement on the F-35. It noted, “We cannot allow President Trump to control the production, maintenance, and software of our military equipment. At a time when the United States is not respecting our territorial sovereignty, we cannot risk him being able to control our military equipment … Cancelling these projects would have an immediate impact on President Trump’s economy and send our clearest message yet that Canada will not stand for his disrespect.”
Mathyssen has largely ignored the issue even though 1,400 emailed her in 2022 calling on the party to question the “Liberal’s fighter jet plans” in a statement headlined “NDP must oppose F-35 purchase”. Previous to that the NDP largely ignored the widely mediatized 2021 No New Fighter Jets for Canada statement signed by Neil Young, Stephen Lewis, Teagan and Sarah, David Suzuki and many other notable Canadian and international figures.
While it’s good the NDP has decided to criticize the F-35, their Sunday statement also calls for Canada to spend 2% of GDP on its military by 2032. That would boost outlays on the war machine by some $20 billion per year (with annual rises matching GDP growth).
This is an odious shift in NDP policy. In July Singh repeated to me that the NDP considered NATO’s 2% of GDP target “arbitrary”. Their shift reflects the party’s subservience to an alliance NDP members previously voted to withdraw from as well as to the president seeking to annex Canada.
The NDP statement even responds to the contradiction, noting that “We don’t do this [call to increase military spending] to placate Donald Trump.” But that is precisely who has spurred the renewed push to boost military spending. Trump’s criticism is what led the Liberal leadership candidates to seek to outdo each other in declaring the speed at which they would hit the 2% of GDP target.
While it may be difficult to have principles in electoral politics, the opportunism shaping NDP military policy is beyond embarrassing.