Dear Editor,
[Re: LETTER: Canada should build its fighter jets, 黑马磁力, June 4]
I am concerned about last week's Letter to the Editor by Cran Campbell. It seems to me that this proposal, if put into effect, would result in a counter result.
He is suggesting that it would be better for Canada to build our own such jets rather than buying them from the U.S. Patriotically that may make some sense. But his letter seems to disregard the fact that, for this lightly populated, taxpaying country of ours, the huge cost of building one fighter jet, let alone a bunch of them, is somewhere between $100,000,000 to $150.000,000 Cdn. each.
We can't afford that. And, why would we want to do that anyway? It seems that the motivation behind this military push is because the U.S. is demanding that we do more defence-wise. And why are they demanding this of Canada? Because of some perceived fear that Russia is going to fire missiles over our northern border into their country. Or maybe it's China. Or maybe it's North Korea.
I guess the plan is that by taking what limited funds we have and spending them on these wonderful fighter jets, and them flying around overhead, will somehow alleviate ours fears. We might be quite a bit poorer, but we'd all feel so much more safer, wouldn't we?
Perhaps a better plan is we take just one jet and apply its cost to a more efficient health-care system across the country? Or perhaps with another jet (or part of it) we could cover the huge expenses spent in fighting forest fires, or maybe supply clean water to our Northern communities. Or maybe we could spend part of one jet on establishing more reliable trading partners within our own country and around the world?
This latter may be one more reason why Trump and Co. would prefer we spend our scarce supply of tax dollars on defence instead of improving our situation here at home. From their perspective, it would be better that Canada become a more vulnerable poorer and weaker country 鈥� rather than a stronger independent one.
Evan Brett, Walnut Grove
