Thundering in on the F-35 Boondoggle - foreword

I've been wading through piles of paper. Some of it is recent correspondence received after the Auditor General's report on the unbelievable mess that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has become. Other material has been out there for a while.

Later on today, (hopefully), we'll examine what the costs were known to be for the F-35 JSF, long before Harper and his minions decided to lie and feed the Canadian public a bill of goods.

First though, lets look at a definition you should have planted in your mind: Life Cycle Cost. (LCC)

The Harperites have been pushing a talking point that the figures they were feeding the Canadian public before, during and after the last election did not include full life cycle costs. From a procurement standpoint, that is simply ludicrous. From my own experience, nobody ever procures capital equipment for the military unless a complete life cycle cost analysis is done and a thorough life cycle cost estimate is produced. The following is from a current publication in use for military project personnel working on LCC for aquisitions:

Life-cycle cost (LCC) can be defined as the total cost to the government of a program over its full life, including costs for research and development; testing; production; facilities; operations; maintenance; personnel; environmental compliance; and disposal.

For a better idea of what all that involves, take a look at this from MTain. (Good idea to read the page on that link. Great comparison on buying a car vs buying a military aircraft)

 

Now, if you want to look at something even more graphic, educational and understandable, go here.  That is using an iceberg, most of which is underwater, to show that the acquisition cost is much less than the overall life cycle cost. 

The Harper talking points that their figures did not include wages, fuel and training are nothing more than the desperate flinging of poo. An equipment acquisition always includes those estimates in the total life cycle cost. That's how you manage your defence budget over the life of your equipment. (Any good fiscal manager knows that, but hey! We're talking about Harper here.)

With that information, it's now time to head on over to The Gazetteer. RossK has put up this morning's interview on CBC The House with the Auditor General and then the weaselly Chris Alexander, parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence.

Listen closely because that is your primer for my next post.

Later. 

Conservatives in action. Pissing off the stroller moms

They are trying anything to get the female vote. Anything. From Sue Bailey: (My emphasis)

An Ottawa children's shop owner says she feels duped after she and several other moms expecting a major announcement on child care wound up as props in a Tory campaign photo.

Krista Thompson says she was contacted by an organizer in Conservative MP Royal Galipeau's office who was seeking a place where moms and tots congregate.

Thompson, a 37-year-old mother of three, co-owns Boomerang Kids which sells children's products and offers free exercise and social gatherings each weekday morning.

The Conservatives told her they were looking for a place where Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Rona Ambrose could reveal new daycare details, says Thompson.

That should have immediately raised suspicions for two reasons:

1. It's Rona Ambrose;

2. The Harperites don't do daycare.

The shop owner saw it as a good chance for marketing exposure and offered moms a 20-per-cent discount on store items, along with free T-shirts, to attend.

"But we're not partisan," Thompson said Wednesday.

"The truth of the matter is we agreed to do it because they said they were making a big announcement about child care. And what became evident by the end of the day was there was no announcement.

"I'm feeling incredibly naive in this whole thing. ... I'm a whole lot more eyes-wide-open after this than I was before.

"It's embarrassing."

What Ms. Thompson has now learned, along with all the others who were duped into this scam, is that it doesn't matter what the Conservatives say. They have their own plan and it centres on them - not you.

Galipeau's campaign manager, Wendy Noble Woodcock, could not immediately explain what happened.

"I was told there would be a child funding announcement so that's what I told them because that's what I was told," she said in an interview.

Cool. The Conservative candidates are now lying to their campaign managers.

It doesn't get better than that.