Now you're doing what Tyr did last night. You're mixing miltary and economic objectives. Which is it? The two are not necessarily compatible.
$274M for Canadian military vehicles to be built in U.S
- Thread starter Tyr
- Start date
Now you're doing what Tyr did last night. You're mixing miltary and economic objectives. Which is it? The two are not necessarily compatible.
Is there enough information to be able to reply intelligently? Do we have the facilities for such an undertaking? If the U.S. has better facilities to produce a more economical product, I say go for it. By the same token they can reciprocate by giving us a contract we are better able to handle. Sometimes being independent is NOT preferable to working as a team for EVERYONE'S best interest.
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.
PickupTruck.Com - Sterling Bullet Debuts at NTEA Work Truck Show
A little less sparkle - a lot more olive drab and you have a medium duty logistics vehicle plus save a lot of jobs in St Thomas
A little less sparkle - a lot more olive drab and you have a medium duty logistics vehicle plus save a lot of jobs in St Thomas
This is the problem. As far as I know there is no operating plant left in Canada that builds trucks. When Western Star closed that was about the end of it.
To reiterate, from the article that I assume Tyr quoted (it's hard to tell as there is rarely a link used), MacKay said "no Canadian company was able to meet all the requirements of the Canadian Forces."
$274M in military vehicles to be built in U.S.
Nobody has posted anything that would refute this claim by MacKay so I will assume that it probably is true. The Canadian military should not lower it's standards and buy whatever happens to be available in Canada just to make American haters happy. Our men and women in uniform deserve much better.
$274M in military vehicles to be built in U.S.
Nobody has posted anything that would refute this claim by MacKay so I will assume that it probably is true. The Canadian military should not lower it's standards and buy whatever happens to be available in Canada just to make American haters happy. Our men and women in uniform deserve much better.
Good source of your always exacting research. "shoot from the lip" and hope for little fallout. Did you expect MacKay to say "oops, we screwed up?"
Why aren't the vehicles being built in Chatham, Ont. at Navistar's Canadian operations. Navistar has sent out 500 lay-off notices to the employess in Chatham (200 will be left) and their is the concern that the plant will close.
I gather that our gov't is more concerned with job creation in the USA
Obviously you fail to understand the dynamics of soverignty and self sufficiancy in terms of our National Dafence.
With your logic as a baseline, Why don't we buy the vehicles for North Korea or Iran?
That's oddly reminiscent of our infamous helicopter deal. After Chretien cancelled the deal, and Canada lost out of the opportunity to be a true partner in manufacturing them, the military revised the specs, and went out for bids. Oddly enough, the same helicopter won. That was too embarrassing for Chretien, so they revised the specs, and went out for bids again. I believe they repeated this farce several times, with the same helicopter winning the evaluations time and again.
Few faults with that, Russia wasn't our ally, they were part of Comintern we were not. Germany didn't start being our ally until after we conquered them and forced them to be.
America is either our ally or our overlord. The scale difference and size difference means its pretty pathetic to pretend otherwise.
Reality bites sometimes.
Since they are being assembled in the US, and some parts are coming from Canada, who's to say how many Canadians will KEEP their jobs as a result of this contract?
The plant is not set up for building that sort of truck. It is for large trucks only(such as the Prostar and Lonestar), and it would probably cost a lot of money to retrofit the plant for building the smaller trucks(plus ordering parts, finding a shipper for said parts, etc.). Believe me, I would like to have seen the plant get the order, but I don't think it was ever feasible.
The plant in Chatham builds heavy trucks (ie, like tractor trailers).The new vehicles for the Canadian military are based on the Workforce chassis, which is similar to the trucks that bakeries and, say, Purolator Courier uses.Totally different beast.
The size of truck being described was being made in St. Thomas at the Sterling Truck Plant,
which recently shut down. I'm thinking of the Acterra model. Class 5-8 trucks...
which recently shut down. I'm thinking of the Acterra model. Class 5-8 trucks...
This is a versatile platform....Look what we've done with Sterling Acterra's...
________________________________