Name: Debates restart over Canada’s fighter jet purchase amid trade tensions
Uploaded: 2025-11-27T01:55:05.643Z
Duration: 3 min 41 s
Description: Canada has reopened debate over its planned F-35 purchase as trade tensions with the United States intensify. Newly obtained defence figures show the Swedish Gripen, the main alternative under consideration, received a significantly lower capability rating in Canada’s 2021 assessment.

Canada has reopened debate over its planned F-35 purchase as trade tensions with the United States intensify. Newly obtained defence figures show the Swedish Gripen, the main alternative under consideration, received a significantly lower capability rating in Canada’s 2021 assessment.

Ottawa

The Canadian government is reevaluating its multi-billion dollar purchase of American F-35 fighter jets due to ongoing trade tensions with the United States. Newly released figures from the Department of National Defense indicate that the F-35 significantly outperformed the Swedish Gripen in military capability assessments during a 2021 competition, scoring 95% compared to the Gripen's 33%.

Despite the F-35's superior performance, the debate has resurfaced as some officials propose reducing the F-35 order and considering the Gripen, partly due to Saab's offer to assemble jets in Canada and create jobs. Supporters of the F-35 argue that defense decisions should prioritize military capability over industrial or political considerations.

Debates restart over Canada’s fighter jet purchase amid trade tensions

Locked in a trade fight with Donald Trump, you may have heard that the Carney government is reconsidering its multi-billion dollar purchase of American F-35 fighter jets. The leading candidate as possible replacement would be the Swedish Gripen. Newly obtained figures show how the F-35 clearly outperformed its Swedish rival in terms of military capabilities during the competition held by Canada in 2021. The CBC's Daniel LeBlanc has been looking into this and he joins me now from Ottawa. So let's talk about what these results tell us. Yeah, well, the results come from the Department of National Defense and they show the quite clear stark difference between the F-35 and the Gripen as fighter jets are quite different. So in terms of military capabilities, the score came in at 95% of all available points for the F-35 built by the American firm Lockheed Martin. By contrast, the Gripen built by Sweden's Saab only got 33% of the total score for military capabilities. We're talking here about the ability to defend North America, the ability to complete successfully missions against modern militaries, potentially Russia or China. Critics argue that the scores obviously favored the F-35 because the Royal Canadian Air Force has always wanted the F-35 so that the tasks or the criteria might've been biased in favor of the F-35. What experts, other experts are saying though, is that they always expected the F-35 to win. They got the contract in 2022, but the difference or the contrast or the gap between the two companies is quite startling for many experts who knew there was a victory by the F-35, but maybe not by that significant gap. So we can listen to two experts who saw those results and what they think about them. The capability assessment here says that there is a clear cut winner, like no contest, no ambiguity. The F-35 was assessed as being much more capable than the alternative. And I don't think that that's fundamentally changed. There's nothing close in capability between a Gripen and an F-35, between a 4.5 generation airplane and a fifth generation airplane like an F-35. So perhaps part of the consideration is precision versus politics as well. Daniel, why are these figures relevant four years after the competition was run? Well, their debate is back on and raging between the F-35 and the Gripen, because as you said, the current government is revising its decision to purchase all 88 aircraft F-35s that it purchased in 2022. For now, there are 16 coming. Some people are arguing in government that that order should be reduced and the new fighter planes should be replaced by Gripens. The government has been enticed, particularly by the promise of Saab, the manufacturer of the Gripen, to assemble them in Canada and thus creating thousands of jobs, both creating Gripens for the Canadian forces, but also for the international markets such as Ukraine. The defenders of the F-35 are saying defence policy is not a job or an industrial policy, that the Canadian government should buy the best fighter aircraft possible for the defence of Canada and North America, and to face off against potentially rivals such as Russia and China, who have much more advanced fighter airplanes and missiles and all that. So the debate is raging and that's why I think those numbers are interesting again four years later. Daniel, thank you for this. That is the CBC's Daniel LeBlanc in Ottawa.

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