February 9, 2025
Scheer vows to de-politicize military procurement, ban Huawei
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer addresses the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations Tuesday, May 7, 2019 in Montreal. Scheer says he will move Canada's Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv if he becomes prime minister.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer addresses the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations Tuesday, May 7, 2019 in Montreal. Scheer says he will move Canada’s Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv if he becomes prime minister.

OTTAWA – Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is vowing to take politics out of Canada’s often complex and lengthy military procurement process.

“I’m very committed to de-politicizing the entire procurement process,” Scheer said. This commitment comes on a week that saw many headlines about the collapse of the case against Vice Admiral Mark Norman, which was centred on the alleged leak of cabinet secrets in favour of Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding in relation to a $700-million shipbuilding contract, and an apparent Liberal backtrack on fighter jet procurement.

“I am sincere in trying to bring opposition parties in to the procurement process early so we can take some of the politics out,” Scheer said in an interview on CTV’s Question Period.

During the 2015 campaign, the Liberals said they would not buy the F-35 fighter jet and launch an open process to procure a “lower-priced” replacement for the CF-18s. This file has evolved over the four years since, and now the government is changing the procurement process to allow Lockheed Martin to submit the F-35 jet into the bid.

“Every election cycle it’s easy for an opposition party to find billions of dollars in savings by going after a big-ticket item like helicopters, or jets, or heavy-lift aircraft and all that does is it punts the ball down the field, it leads to further delays,” Scheer said.

Scheer has begun holding a series of keynote speeches in which he is unveiling his “vision” for the country and putting forward broad policy ideas that his party will be putting into their election platform. The first was on foreign policy, where he stated his intent to join the U.S. ballistic-missile defence program, seek to strengthen ties with the United States, and push back harder on China.

He also spoke about wanting to upgrade current Canadian assets like submarines, and fighter jets but did not speak to how much this could cost, or where the money would come from.

Scheer said he will have more specifics “closer to the election campaign,” but said that taking the politics out of the decision making processes for purchases of this scale will be a way to bring the cost down.

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See Also:

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(2) No cover-ups on Norman, just let the committee meet

(3) A principled Conservative policy would challenge Trudeau’s climate propaganda with truth

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(5) Tax cuts expected as Alberta’s UCP government moves to “renew the Alberta Advantage”

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