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Scott Taylor: Ranger rifle fiasco adds up for Canadian taxpayers

Canadian military procurement is in the spotlight these days, thanks in part to the badgering and threats levelled by U.S. President Donald Trump.

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While calling on Canadians to get their elbows up in response to Trump’s trade war tariffs, Prime Minister Mark Carney is actually bending over backwards to comply with Trump’s demands that we drastically increase our defence budget.

The Carney Liberals have just days remaining in the current fiscal year to push cash into the coffers of the Department of National Defence. Last summer, Carney pledged to meet the NATO alliance’s spending objective of two per cent of gross domestic product on national defence by that deadline.

Ironically, during that process of Canada nearly doubling the defence budget in a single year to two per cent of GDP, NATO under Trump’s direction raised its spending objective to five per cent of GDP by 2032. That would mean a whopping $150-billion annual defence budget.

While Canadian defence procurement is notoriously glacial in its progress, it is also by its very nature extremely complex for the average citizen to fathom. Major programs for things like fighter jets, warships and armoured vehicles will not only factor in the purchase price but also the life-cycle costs for operating those platforms. Thus, when there are billions of dollars in cost overruns or delayed........

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