Two Royal 22e Régiment light armoured vehicles in a flooded street in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Québec. May 2011. Photo courtesy the Department of National Defence.

The Canadian government is in the process of reviewing its current plan to acquire 88 F-35 fighter jets, and rightly so. The program is projected to cost $839.7 million per aircraft over a lifecycle of just 37 years. That’s a total price tag of $73.9 billion, even before the usual budget overruns. This makes the F-35 the most expensive procurement in Canadian military history, and one of the least justifiable in terms of strategic necessity and fiscal responsibility.

Critics of the F-35 purchase have long raised serious concerns. The jets are not only expensive and maintenance-intensive, but also ill-suited to Canada’s core defence tasks like Arctic patrols, search and rescue, and sovereignty enforcement missions. These jets are specifically designed for high-intensity combat: engaging in peer-to-peer warfare, stealth strikes and deep penetration missions of enemy air defences. In other words, they are built for offensive missions, not the kind of work the RCAF does on a day-to-day basis.

More troubling is that the F-35’s source code is controlled remotely by the United States, meaning there is a potential “kill switch” that could disable Canadian jets on a whim. This alone should be a non-starter for any country that values sovereignty over its own defence capabilities. Buying the planes would deepen Canada’s reliance on the US defence industry and its software systems, creating a dangerous form of dependency at a time when American policy is becoming more unpredictable and hostile to Canadian interests and values.

Beyond these issues lies a deeper strategic concern: opportunity cost. Every dollar spent on aircraft for hypothetical hot wars is a dollar not spent on urgent issues facing Canadians and the world today—needs like disaster preparedness, climate resilience, and humanitarian aid.

Indeed, we........

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