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The Canadian government made a last-minute, billion-dollar change to how much it was willing to spend on its new search-and-rescue aircraft fleet, but didn’t bother informing the bidders trying to win the contract to build the planes of the change in budget.

In December, the federal government announced it would spend $4.7 billion to buy a fleet of C-295 planes from Airbus, including long-term support for the planes. The losing bidder, Italian aerospace firm and Airbus rival Leonardo, had been under the impression Canada could only afford to spend $3.4 billion, so had tailored its bid to that amount.

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Leonardo has gone to the Federal Court in Ottawa to ask a judge to overturn the contract, arguing that the C-295 aircraft cannot fulfill the search-and-rescue missions as outlined in the requirements provided to industry. But it is also angered by the last-minute budget switch.

“If we had been told that was the budget then our bid would have been much, much different,” said retired Lt.-Gen. Steve Lucas, who is a consultant for Leonardo. “We still haven’t been given a straight answer on how the budget jumped to $4.7 billion.”