The CF-5 was a low-cost, short-range, lightweight fighter.
Posted on 12/04/2002 11:11:14 AM PST by Clive
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The main front page story in the first ever Toronto Sun was one I wrote about "a $10 million goof" the Trudeau Liberal government made in buying new fighter planes.
I obtained the information from Auditor-General Max Henderson and his small, but very capable staff.
In that first edition of Nov. 1, 1971, I told how the government had spent $10 million to buy 16 new CF-5 fighter jets.
They were bought as replacements for ones they had already sold to Venezuela - planes they had "mothballed" directly from the factory as unneeded.
The government had bought 115 of the jets from a Montreal plant for $215 million. And they did it despite experts' contention they were too slow, too small, and had too short a range.
"This is unbelievable that the Government would order more copies of a plane that was a terrible blunder in the first place," declared Tory House Leader Jed Baldwin.
The story also told how the government spent $17 million refitting the aircraft carrier Bonaventure in a Quebec shipyard - and then promptly sold it for $750,000 as scrap.
And $60 million was spent developing a hydrofoil vessel that no one wanted - not even the Canadian navy.
In all cases, Henderson and his watchdogs sniffed out the information and reported it to Parliament, their employer. Baldwin tried to get an investigation launched into the fighter planes and was rebuffed.
But that didn't stop the tenacious Henderson from constantly digging into more government waste and reporting it to Parliament in his annual reports.
The result: Trudeau's henchmen tried to get the NDP opposition MPs to join them in firing Henderson - but they refused.
That's history. But little has changed.
Yesterday, Auditor-General Sheila Fraser - who's emerging as a worthy successor to Henderson - revealed the scandalous spending mess involving the Liberal government's gun registration program.
FEES WOULD PAY FOR IT
Just think of it: the Chretienites claimed in 1995 when they imposed the program that it would cost the taxpayers only $2 million total. That was the difference between the $119 million they said it would cost to set it up and the $117 million they would grab in fees from people registering their firearms.
The government's contention was that registration would drastically reduce crimes involving guns. In doing so, the Grits chose to ignore the fact that almost all gun crimes are committed with illegal firearms, mostly prohibited handguns and automatic weaponry.
But yesterday Auditor-General Fraser reported that the Liberals' gun registration program will cost an astounding $1 billion($1,000,000,000).
Now, that's just slightly more than the $2 million that Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his ministers said it would cost when they were bamboozling gullible Canadians into dropping their objections.
Some call it another Liberal con game. Others might call it criminal incompetence.
In fact, the government's books involving the gun registry were in such a mess that her auditors had to stop their investigation before it was completed. And that means the total cost could be well over $1 billion and rising.
'INEXCUSABLE FAILURE'
In her report, the A-G lambasted the Liberal regime for its "inexcusable failure" to provide complete information on the gun registry and other spending messes.
This is the same A-G who blasted the Chretienites for not spending enough on the armed forces to replace its deteriorating and obsolete equipment. And she blew the whistle on questionable spending on Liberal-connected promotion programs in Quebec.
Her audits have revealed such government idiocies as sending heating rebate cheques to 7,500 dead people, 1,600 convicts and to 4,000 people who didn't even live in Canada.
Of course, the Canadian Alliance and other opposition parties can scream all they want about such incompetence and horrible waste of taxpayers' dollars.
As in the days of Henderson, Liberal MPs have been grumbling about Fraser's findings - suggesting she isn't impartial. And perhaps they'll try to get her dumped - the same kind of tactic they tried against Henderson.
Hopefully, they will fail. Canadians need her services badly, even if the arrogant Liberals keep on ignoring her findings - the bitter, costly truth.
...In that first edition of Nov. 1, 1971, I told how the government had spent $10 million to buy 16 new CF-5 fighter jets....
But yesterday Auditor-General Fraser reported that the Liberals' gun registration program will cost an astounding $1 billion($1,000,000,000).
Her audits have revealed such government idiocies as sending heating rebate cheques to 7,500 dead people, 1,600 convicts and to 4,000 people who didn't even live in Canada.
The CF-5 was a low-cost, short-range, lightweight fighter.
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