Tories release $490B military plan without fanfare

nice!

Awesome!!! It's about time we give our fighting troops the proper equipment to do the job. Bravo Zulu for not being a trumpeter of what you do that's good. That's refreshing, a politician not blowing his own horn.

I hope this figure is a Total amount and not New Spending. If it's New Spending, it's not going to fly.

That list of conditions that they expect the forces to maintain is a pretty steep one:



Good for the government for finally treating the forces as a nessesity and not some special interest group.

And my fave.. Dawn Black gets another opportuunity to prove why she's unqualified to be defence critic.

It won't be easy but..

at least we have a government that ISN'T putting it's head in the sand when it comes to defending this nation.

420 B over the next 20 years is only 21B a year anyway. I hope capital expenditures do NOT come out of general operating budgets.

That is great news.

I have to agree that if capital purchases don't come out of that $490 billion, then annual spending would average $24.5, which 20 years from now isn't all that much. Seeing as the CF has six major fleets to replace (destroyers, frigates, fighters, SAR aircraft, patrol aircraft and land combat vehicles) this sum, while seeming to be huge, isn't all that much. When all is said and done, I can see new DDHs/FFHs costing as much as $15-20 billion, with fighters close to that. SAR and patrol aircraft will be $5-8 billion or so each. Seeing as we spend more than half the defence budget right now on salaries/benefits and other 'staffing' related costs,

Personally, if Harper was smart, he'd do the same thing and say we're going to spend XX billion on health care over the next 20 years too, simply by adding up the next 20 years of expected budgets. That alone might get him a majority...

My only worry is that we'll see a recurrence of Mulroney-syndrome...promise big and then renege later.

Don't worry. The duration is long enough that it could still all be cancelled by Chretien Mk.2

FINALLY!

Steep list? Maybe, but those are pretty much the things we do now anyway (without that sum). Though, $490 BILLION will help us do them even better!!

15 Billion is NOT Enough for equipment. 100 Billion is what I would like to see on new equipment, planes, ships, subs..

Also, quit with the second hand shit, Canadian's are more than capable of building our own.

In short 500 B total with more on Equipment.

second hand was the liberals primary shopping spree for the military. We are paying for it now!

Good for the military--they've been given the short shrift too often. Though I still would have preferred a tax break to more government spending. I would have liked to see some defence R&D funding to private corporations. I wonder if that's in there somewhere.