The Ottawa Citizen is American owned media pretending to be Canadian, infiltrating Canadian culture and politics.
For everyone rightly concerned about US & corporate/billionaire ownership & of our media oligopoly: please send a letter to our PM and tell him not to proceed with his plan to cut funding for the CBC.
Where are you hearing about Carney’s planning to cut funding to the CBC?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mark-carney-cbc-funding-1.7501902
Yes, I understand that Carney made that election promise, but it appears he does not intend to keep it.
The intent to cut the CBC’s funding has been widely reported. Here’s a piece from the Toronto Star: https://sh.itjust.works/post/42291759
Probably from Edmonton.
try the Toronto Star: https://sh.itjust.works/post/42291759
“the U.S. will own all parts for Canada’s F-35s even when they are located at Canadian bases.”
Lol even if you believe our resources are better put toward fighter jets than, say, fighting forest fires: that’s not a purchase, that’s a rental
Sovereignty as a Service
Surrender as a Service
Terribly written article…
So there’s no decision on it yet, there’s a review underway, there’s no official statements, the military isn’t making a comment, those no longer active in the military and free to comment on it seem to be against continuing the F-35 program.
But somehow postmedia is saying the “The Canadian military is solidly backing the controversial F-35 fighter jet”? Based on what? There’s no statements, no quotes, not even “sources close to the matter.”
Yes, the Canadian military had backed the F-35 before Trump started with his 51st state nonsense. It’s now under review and we’ll find out whether the military still backs it at the end of summer.
Postmedia sucks.
It links to the source.
This is the third paragraph of the article:
Reuters news service reported Thursday that the Canadian military is recommending that Canada stick with its proposed purchase of 88 U.S.-built F-35s. That recommendation didn’t come as a surprise for observers since the Canadian Forces originally lobbied for and selected the American stealth fighter.
Ah ok… OP probably should link to the Reuters story instead of the shit postmedia summary of the story which feels like AI slop. The Reuters story at least tells us it’s coming from “sources familiar with the matter”.
The Reuters story was actually posted a couple days ago (by me, in fact!) and as far as I remember, it didn’t include the additional context of other countries rejecting the deals, or the info about one of the European companies offering to let Canada build their jets here.
This article has worthwhile information in it, as well as links to sources. Perhaps it could have used an extra pass on the editing for readability’s sake, but it’s hardly just a summary of another article, and doesn’t read like AI slop to me.
Swiss politicians also called Thursday for cancelling that country’s F-35 purchase after Trump hit their country with 39 per cent tariffs.
You don’t think the grammar on that sentence is insane? It’s either AI slop or a human that’s really bad at writing.
Also it’s very important to give sources for where a news organization is getting information from. Which Swiss politicians?
Postmedia is saying just “Canadian military” which suggests it’s official, while Reuters (a real news source) indicates it’s “sources familiar with the matter” which indicates it’s not official yet.
The Reuters story was actually posted a couple days ago (by me, in fact!) and as far as I remember, it didn’t include the additional context of other countries rejecting the deals, or the info about one of the European companies offering to let Canada build their jets here.
According to Reuters, the article was published on Aug 7 and last updated on Aug 7. A good news organization would indicate what was changed at the end of the article if they changed something, and there’s nothing there indicating the article changed. The Postmedia article was published Aug 8 and updated “1 day ago” but don’t indicate what they changed because it’s Postmedia and they’re not real journalists.
Sorry if I’m sounding mean, just think it’s important to recognize the indicators of quality journalism when choosing news sources since there’s so much misinformation and disinformation out there. For example this is a pretty good article about what the “Swiss politicians also called Thursday” is about: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-politicians-push-to-cancel-f-35-fighter-jet-deal-after-us-tariffs/89796985 Sources are indicated, and the article was edited after publishing and it’s noted what was changed. This can be trusted because if Bloomberg lied in their quoting of the named people there would be liability issues for them. “Sources familiar” is something I know not to trust 100% but Reuters has a good reputation so there’s a high probability it’s true, though not as high as it would be if they could name their sources.
Compare these to the postmedia article, and it’s obvious the postmedia article it complete garbage. It’s just “Somebody said something in Switzerland and the military likes the F-35 and stuff.” They’re cheaping out because while they could license the Reuters article and put it on their page, instead they reworded it poorly to save some money.
I’m not going to address every part of your response because frankly I do not have the time to spend on debunking everything you’ve said here.
But yes, that sentence you quote was indeed why I suggested that another editing pass would have been good, but you’ve also taken it out of context; the previous sentence mentioned the U.S., so the author clearly was trying to not repeat the same country name.
Anyway the point is that this article is not merely a rephrasing of another one, and does in fact add additional context. I don’t like PostMedia either, but this thought-terminating cliche of blanket mistrust is ridiculous. Grain of salt, absolutely. But I rarely hear people complain when an article aligns with their existing political bias.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a news organization to do their jobs and have basic journalistic standards. And when they fail to do so, there’s no reason to to share their content when there’s articles available on the same subject from news organizations that do have journalistic standards. We’re in an era of misinformation and distinformation and articles like the postmedia one just promotes a general ignorance of media literacy. People think it’s normal for news articles to not indicate where they’re getting their information from and think discrepancies between media sources is due to political bias. If we demand all media sources indicate something about their sources then the scammy click bait crap not doing so will be more likely to trigger alarm bells for not doing any due diligence.
Postmedia’s laziness is just normalizing the degradation of journalistic standards and that creates distrust in media. Their unwillingness to pay real journalists or pay licensing fees to wire services like Reuters (who will pay real journalists) is siphoning off scarce funds away from journalism. They’re a cancer on news journalism.
As I noted in my initial response: the article has links in it.
Anyway putting all that aside, I’d be interested to know what you think we should do regarding the F-35s. Would you be upset if Carney went ahead with the purchase?
This seems like a bad idea. Fighter jets are a generational investment and our southern neighbours democracy only seems to getting worse. Until the US turns its democratic decline around we shouldn’t be committing to any weapon system that is locked to US supply chains.
This 100%
If I was buying a roof for my house I wouldn’t buy it from a company who look like it was about to go out of business. This is very irritating.
We should absolutely be looking at diversifying our military procurement as much as possible, especially away from the U.S.
Why on earth should we give a neighbour who is no longer trustworthy our monies for their technology that they will in the end own, be able to disable / disarm and control our military power by it?
I certainly hope Carney and our military come to their senses and aquire from other sources.
The canadian military doesn’t understand how big of a threat maga fascists are. They think they’re the exceptions.
The CIA and the US defense industry worm their way into everyone’s business, especially so-called allies. I have very little faith in either CAF or CSIS to operate free of US influence.
It makes sense to get the Grippen to form the bulk of the fleet as it’s a made in Canada solution that gives us as much independence as any of the options. It is a gen 4.5 fighter, perfectly suited for most uses and very affordable.
If we have a fleet of Grippens, I can also see some advantages for planes like the 16 F35 we’ve already comitted to buying. Special purpose missions, like flying NATO missions where you don’t have air superiority will benefit from Gen 5. I don’t want the F35 at all. I don’t trust the Americans at all. A Gen 5 fighter is indispensible.
I only see a few paths. A fleet of Gen 4.5 like the Grippens to hold us over until we can get a trustworthy Gen5.
We can try to join existing consortiums like the GCAP, the 2035 Gen5 fighter program of the UK, Italy and Japan or the FCAS, the French, German, Spanish 6th gen consortium. Both of those are 2035 and 2040 targeting. That’s a long time to wait for a Gen 5 fighter, especially in this climate.
Making our own Gen 5 fighter is possible, but not feasible or practical. There is nothing we could build in time that couldn’t be done better faster, cheaper than already in progress multi-partner programs. You could always try and retrofit something like the Grippen into a gen 4.9 by incorporating stealth features, but why? Half measures aren’t great and pose their own problems.
Buying the minimum 16 F35 already comitted to stings. But as a temporary, stop gap measure looks like the only G5 solution. It’s pissing away a lot of money and incuring a lot of risk, but the next 10-15 years will be a long time to wait without a proper Gen5 fighter. We must not, under any circumstances built our airforce’s fleet on such an untrustworthy backbone.
So all Gen 4.5 for 10-15 years or 80 Gen 4.5 and 16 Gen5 for 10-15 years.
carney you stupid bitch.
The article clearly states it’s the military that is backing the purchase. While
The final decision on whether Canada proceeds with the F-35 purchase will be made by Carney
Yeah exactly. It remains to be seen if Carney is a stupid bitch.
His answer on this will definitely impact my opinion of him.
the Canadian military is recommending that Canada stick with its proposed purchase of 88 U.S.-built F-35s. That recommendation didn’t come as a surprise for observers since the Canadian Forces originally lobbied for and selected the American stealth fighter.
The final decision on whether Canada proceeds with the F-35 purchase will be made by Carney who ordered the review of Canada’s purchase
88 is such a peculiarly fitting number for the Heil Hitler gang.
This tracks. Only rarely do the decision makers in the CF have any foresight.
Why?
It’s a coin flip whether it flies long enough to fire a missile.
We need a petition to stop this bullshit. The JSF Program was a scam to begin with
Dear American newspaper: the deal was already signed for some of it, so backing out completely - as you fucking well know - isn’t possible.
Parliament can cancel a contract at any time, for any reason, with no financial penalties, and it’s likely there’s a clause in the contract itself whereby the minister can do this even without parliament. That’s why many of the discussions revolve around whether Canada should go ahead with all 88 jets or just the 16(?) we have
already paid for.edit: article says “financially committed to”, so I’m not 100% sure we’ve paid already. If not, then yeah I’m pretty sure we can cancel the whole thing if we want toHere’s the relevant part of the procurement laws https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/d-1/page-2.html#h-171862
See section 21 which reads as follows:
Premature rescission, resolution or termination of contract
21 No person is entitled to damages, compensation or other allowance for loss of profit, direct or indirect, arising out of the rescission, resolution or termination of a defence contract at any time before it is fully performed if it is rescinded, resolved or terminated under a power contained in the contract or under a power conferred by or under an Act of Parliament.
Carney lied in his campaign. He has no elbows.
Get bent
That’s not a logical argument against theirs.
