Tories spend $1.7 billion on flight school

Photo: The Canadian Press

A Canadian military Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone conducts test flights with HMCS Montreal in Halifax harbour on April 1, 2010. (THE CANADIAN PRESS / Andrew Vaughan)

More than $1.7 billion has already been spent on the elusive effort to replace Canada's aging Sea King helicopters, internal documents show — a clue as to why the Harper government is sticking with the troubled program.

The eye-popping figure — about 30 per cent of the overall $5.3-billion budget — could have meant a far worse political firestorm for the Conservatives than the one that accompanied the ill-fated plan to buy the F-35 stealth fighter.

In the aftermath of an independent report last fall on the beleaguered plan to buy the CH-148 Cyclone choppers as replacements for the Sea Kings, the government acknowledged it was looking at other aircraft — even going so far as to meet with other manufacturers.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act show the money went towards "acquisition progress payments" and "in-service support set-up." The nearly decade-long program has delivered just four test helicopters that National Defence has refused to formally accept.

The $1.7-billion figure is slightly higher than numbers that were buried deep in federal public accounts records released last fall.

Only about one-third of the total has been spent on aircraft. The bulk has gone towards developing mission systems, training facilities in Nova Scotia and BC, flight-simulation equipment and support.

The briefing notes, prepared for a committee of deputy ministers, also paint a more detailed picture of the back room tug-of-war and building frustration in the military as missed delivery deadlines continued to pile up.

Cancelling the program was clearly not an option, say critics who accuse the Conservatives of perpetrating a charade with its consultations last fall.

Spending so much money and having virtually nothing to show for it would have caused untold political damage, especially among a frustrated Conservative base still reeling from the ongoing Senate expense scandal.

"It would have been a bigger blow to them, to their base, than the F-35 situation," said NDP defence critic Jack Harris.

"I am certain that politics was part of the calculations."

The Conservative reputation for prudent management of the public purse took a hit in 2012 when the auditor general slammed the F-35 stealth fighter program, even though no money had been spent.

Regardless of whether Ottawa could have recouped some of the costs, cancelling the Cyclones would have triggered an ugly, protracted court battle in the run-up to the 2015 election, said Michael Byers, a political science professor and defence researcher at the University of British Columbia.

"I think this is a big, dark cloud that hangs over the Conservative government," said Byers, who has argued publicly for the deal to be scrapped.

Byers said the government is rolling the dice on an unproven, developmental aircraft when it could have had an established maritime helicopter by 2018 — the latest deadline set by Sikorsky, the Cyclone's manufacturer.

The Cyclones are meant to replace Canada's 50-year-old CH-124 Sea Kings. Conservatives often criticized Jean Chretien's Liberal government for cancelling the original program in 1993, to the tune of $478 million in penalties.

The government's statement last Friday said it expected the Cyclones to be fully operational by 2018 and that the Sea Kings would begin retiring next year.