Most people can walk and chew gum at the same time. We have companies in Canada capable of building these vehicles to the specs needed. How is that not compatible to both the economy and military?
General Motors Defense, now operated in London Ontario by
General Dynamics, probably would have been a logical choice.
Maybe, I don;t know the details of that. Were they given a chance to bid? If so, then the question is waht was the bidding price? If not, then why not? I'd need more details for this. But if indeed they did bid and the US company gave a better deal, then from the taxpayers' perspective, it would make more sense to buy the US product for the same quality and then let the Canadian dollar drop to compensate.
If the argument is national military defence, then economic efficiency becomes irrelevent and it should be a matter of national policy that all military products are to be produced in Canada regardless of comparative efficiency.
But then you can see how military and economic objectives are different. From an economic standpoint, we'd have to know more details on the bid and not encourage inefficient industries. Mussolini tried that in Italy in the Battle for wheat. The Italians were imporitng wheat and exporting other products. Mussolini wanted economic self-sufficiency by having all products produced in Italy. Well, he won the battle for wheat and did make Italy economically self-sufficient. The problem though was that the porducts that Italian farmers had been producing before they could produce more efficiently, and wheat could be produced more efficienty abroad too. So in fact Italian farmers were wealthier by exporting what they made best and importing the wheat. After the battle for wheat was won, because Italy couldn't produce wheat as efficiently, Itlay became poorer too.
So economic self-sufficiency and efficiency are not necessarily compatible objectives. Sometimes it is preferable to specialize.
So no, economic and national military objectives are not necessarily compatible. But again, we'd need the details fo the deal to know whether the government's decision was a wise one or not.