Last month, after a plan to buy $12.2-billion worth of 50 military aircraft was criticized by industry insiders and opposition politicians for perceived unfairness of the bidding process, the Defence Minister announced an abridged plan, for transport planes only. Of the total $4.6-billion cost, $3-billion is directly related to procuring the aircraft, with $1.6-billion for servicing costs over 20 years...The article notes also that also the bidding specifications set out a delivery date of 2008, internal documents anticipate delivery only by 2010 - by which time Airbus is expected to have added capacity to build planes which would suit Canada's purposes.
Interviews with industry and government insiders -- all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of missing out on future government work or suffering other reprisals -- confirm that the transport contract, whatever it may evolve into in future, has not been designed to produce a competition...
DND officials have also privately conceded that a requirement that the new aircraft be "certified to aviation certification standards" by the expected contract award date effectively rules out Airbus's A400M transport...This condition on certification is a first in Canadian military procurements. In the past, the department has required certification by the delivery date.
It may be necessary in times of genuine emergency to bypass some elements of competitive bidding even on such large contracts. But the need for transport planes isn't a new one, so that argument always rang hollow when it came to this purchase. And there's never any excuse for building artificial requirements into the bidding process for the sake of reaching a preordained outcome...particularly when the reality seems to be that the situation is less urgent than the government has claimed.
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