Is It Time to Skewer Harper With the F-35 Fiasco?

Probably the question should be whether Mulcair or Trudeau have the political acumen to bloody Stephen Harper over his blunders and deceit in Canada's F-35 saga.

We know now that Harper's obsessive drive for a single source procurement on a "buy before you fly basis" was insanely reckless.  Harper owes a profound debt of gratitude to the parliamentary budget officer and the auditor general for stopping him cold in his tracks before he could ink a deal for 65 of these hyper-costly and deeply flawed airplanes.

Harper, with his early insistence that no competitive fly off was necessary, came awfully close to saddling Canada's air force with a terrible airplane for decades to come.

Harper needs to be called out on the floor of the Commons for what he tried to do, what he very nearly did and what would have befallen the defence of Canada had he not been derailed by Michael Ferguson and Kevin Page.

At the very least Mulcair and Trudeau should extract a commitment from Harper that there will be a full, open and competitive fly-off of every fighter on the market that can perform the full range of multi-role fighters - close support, tactical bombing, air combat and air defence/interception.  Invite Lockheed to bring their F-35 if they dare and let us see how it goes, head to head, against Rafale, Eurofighter, Griffen, Super Hornet and the latest F-15.  That would probably be the last we would hear from Lockheed which would send a clear message to every other American ally signing up for the F-35.