December 23, 2022
Letters to the Editor
Hamilton Spectator
Re: “Ottawa to spend 7 billion on 16 fighter jets”, Dec. 21, page A8
suggested title: Let’s scrap the F-35 purchase!
Dear Sir or Madam:
The Trudeau government’s F-35 purchase is a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money, for several reasons. First, these fighter jets aren’t designed primarily to defend Canada. Rather, they were developed to lock Canada into a US military command structure for offensive NATO operations overseas, just as Canadian F-18’s did so destructively in the former Yugoslavia and Libya, for example. Second, the lifetime costs of these war machines (plus those of purchasing new warships and drones) means that ordinary Canadians will be denied financial, environmental, and health security, as growing funds directed to military budgets means other budgets shrink. Third, the F-35’s enormous carbon footprint (60,000 litres of fuel per hour of flight) will effectively cancel out Canada’s ambitious carbon reduction goals.
What Canada really needs is a foreign policy independent of NATO and geared instead to peace and cooperation with all other countries on common threats to all humanity, namely pandemics and environmental collapse.
Let’s scrap the F-35 purchase!
(text: 158 words)
Ken Stone
Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War
UPDATE: The letter was published on January 6, 2023!