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Photo by Paul Crock/AFP/Getty Images

That’s not good, but a Canadian military procurement that only runs a fifth over budget would probably set some kind of efficiency record. Still, parsing the specifics of this procurement misses the main point: if Canada doesn’t have enough fighter jets, instead of buying a few extra old ones, why not just skip to buying lots of new ones?

The obvious answer is cost: A whole new fleet of modern jets would cost a lot more money than 18 old ones. True enough. But we’re going to need to buy the new fleet eventually, and the sooner the better. The billion we’re giving to Australia for old jets is a billion defence dollars that can’t be used to offset the cost of the new ones. And in Canada (especially) defence dollars are precious for their scarcity.

The Liberals are still locked in by preposterous conflicting campaign promises

The problem is that the Liberals are still locked in by preposterous conflicting campaign promises during the 2015 election: that they would select Canada’s next fighter jet in a fair and open competition, but that they also would refuse to consider the F-35 jet favoured by the Harper Conservatives. You cannot have a fair and open competition while excluding a leading candidate. The Liberal answer to this self-imposed problem seems to be just punting the final decision off as long as they can. Hence, the purchase of four-decade-old Australian castoffs (jets Australia no longer needs because it’s replacing its aging fleet with modern equipment).

It’s a bad plan, and yet, depressingly, a quintessentially Canadian one.