"Look out, here come the Canadians"

The above headline isn't uttered by enemies cowering in fear but rather allies clearing landing areas for the Canadian military's antiquated Sea King helicopters. Ottawa is finally looking to replace them. In reading about the history of these helicopters a few things really struck me. First:

When the Canadians suggested Sea Kings could be launched and land on a destroyer, navies reacted by calling them "crazy Canucks." But they made it work, inventing a "hauldown" technique - the Canadians nicknamed it the "beartrap" - essentially a vertical winch that centred the Sea King over the destroyer - often heaving in the raucous North Atlantic - and the chopper pilot then flew down the hauldown and landed on a rolling surface about the size of a double-car driveway.

Canadian ingenuity demonstrated, respect earned.
Second:

The Tories tried to buy new helicopters in the early 1990s, after a decade of severe military cost-cutting and, no small matter, the end of the Cold War. In 1992, the Tories announced they would spend $4.8 billion to buy 50 EH-101 helicopters from the Anglo-Italian consortium European Helicopter Industries Ltd.. These were state-of-the-art choppers, the best in the world.

Then came the 1993 federal election campaign, when Jean Chretien and his Liberals attacked the Tory plan as wasteful, calling the EH-101 a "Cadillac" helicopter. When the Liberals won and Chretien became prime minister one of his first acts was to scrap the Tory deal, an act that cost the Canadian government nearly $500 million in cancellation fees.

This was on the heels of the military blackeye in the Somalia Affair. The Liberals, preferring to be politicians rather than leaders, rode the negative public opinion fallout and cut military spending to the quick. And lastly:

They were supposed to have been retired by 2000, but the air force prolonged their life by spending $80 million to keep them flying until 2005. The Sea Kings require 30 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight, and they are unavailable for operations 40 per cent of the time.

There's logic. Pump money into something you can't use effectively and put lives in danger to boot.

These snippets show beautifully how the Canadian Military went from one of the most respected and innovative units in the world to a laughing stock. The worst slide can be directly attributed to the Chretien-led Liberals of the last decade. I hope the winning bid is for whatever the "Cadillac" 'copter of the day happens to be. Our military needs to start feeling proud again and start gaining back some of the respect it used to have.