While the government campaigns on its budget proposal, Canadians need to ask how can they trust the numbers? Why should they trust the numbers.
The un-tendered F-35 jet fighter program will be, if executed, the largest government procurement in history. Yet the government and Department of National Defence are using out-dated cost data, information that has already been revised by the US government which is leading the development of the new fighters; Canada is merely tagging along on the order. The truth, which the government is hiding, is that the program is now expected to cost almost double - $30+ billion - what we have been told.1 Even more increases can be expected before the first jet is delivered.
The government also continues to withhold information demanded by Parliament concerning the cost of its justice program, even while boasting it will spend 1000 times as much on jails as on youth crime prevention.2 If Parliament were told the true cost of the jails for minors project, the figures probably would be worse.
The government refuses to divulge, or provides false information about, the costs of its major initiatives, yet wants us to trust it on the budget. Why should we?
