Back in 1993, the Liberals rode to power by promising to cancel the GST, roll back NAFTA, restore integrity to public life and cancel the Progressive Conservative government's $5.8 billion, 43 unit, EH-101 helicopter contract. Of course the GST is still with us, Mr. Chretien is now as big a free-trader as Mr. Mulroney ever was and when it comes to integrity, well just think of names like Dupuy, Minna, Fry, and Gagliano … enough said.

Sadly, the one area where a promise was kept was on the helicopter file. In fairness, Canada did not have the fiscal capacity in 1993 to buy 43 helicopters at a price tag of $5.8 billion. But there was and is no doubt about the operational need for new whirlybirds. Now, nine years later, this need is even more acute especially when once considers that we are engaged in the theatre of battle in Afghanistan.

The original Tory contract was for 15 new EH-101s for search and rescue (replacing the Labrador fleet) and another 28 EH-101s to replace the Navy's aging fleet of Sea Kings. These Sea Kings - 41 in total - were delivered between 1963 and 1969 and some were already 30 years old by 1993. Now these things are close to forty years old and older than yours truly.

Since 1963, 11 choppers and seven lives have been lost in Sea King crashes. It now takes between 30 and 40 hours of maintenance for each hour a Sea King spends in the air. Despite all protestations from Defence Minister Eggleton, these things are really not fit to fly and there have been six emergency landings of Sea Kings in the last year alone.

Nonetheless, shortly after coming to power, Mr. Chretien cancelled the contract in 1993 at cost of $500 million to taxpayers paid out to the contractor and its subsidiaries. And then we had to wait five years until 1998 when Team Cormorant (the EH by another name) was awarded a $790 million contract to replace the 15 Labradors. To date, four units have been delivered, two more are en-route from Italy and all will be in hand and hopefully in operation by late 2003.

Under the original Tory deal, the EH-101 choppers would have been delivered starting in 1997 with all 43 in operation by next year. Now, the expected delivery date for first of the 28 units to replace the Sea Kings (valued at $2.9 billion) needed by our Navy is 2005 at the earliest.

In the hunt for this $2.9 billion deal are Team Cormorant, Sikorsky, Eurocopter and NH Industries. The procurement itself has been mired with the usual competition between bidders and its inherent quite media campaign as each tries to get the attention of top defence brass. But this goes with the territory in major public sector procurement endeavours. What has made things much worse has been the deliberate dithering by the Chretien government.

For example, Ottawa has insisted in splitting the procurement into two parts, one for airframes and the other for internal avionics components. Not only is this an irresponsible and unnecessary strategy, this will set delivery back by an additional two year from 2005 to 2007. This chicanery will cost taxpayers an extra $400 million: $180 million for project and contracting overhead and an extra $220 million in risk liabilities.

To make matters worse, the contract specifications now on the street ask for shorter endurance times, slower cruising speeds, lighter weight loads and minimal hovering capacity during crisis periods than even the Sea King could perform in its heyday back when I wasn't even a twinkle in my late-father's eye.

Apparently King JC and his repeat-it-for-me thrice, factually challenged Minister, Art Eggleton, believe that saddling our troops with a helicopter for 25 years that can't even match a brand-new Sea King is good public policy. Only in some soldier's worst nightmare could this pass for good public policy. A shame and a disgrace is the more apt description for this fiasco.

It appears as though Mr. Eggleton is destined to match WWI Col. Sam Hughes in the incompetence file. It was Mr. Hughes who gave us the Ross Rifle, a pull-back bolt design that killed our own soldiers! It wasn't even made for military use and had to be replaced midway through the war. This helicopter fiasco also reminds us of the early 1990s Griffon debacle: a civilian helicopter design that couldn't carry soldiers and their equipment at the same time, as reported by the Auditor General.

It costs the military an extra $60 million/year to keep the Sea Kings in operation. Over the fifteen years of delay this means an extra $900 million in costs that could have been minimized. Add this to $500 million in cancellation costs, $790 million for the first Cormorant contract and now at least $3.3 billion for 28 new choppers and you get a cost of at least $5.5 billion.

The Liberal government is doing its best to stall this process and several of its own backbenchers have admitted as much. Sadly it is taxpayers and our depleted military that will continue pay for this partisan vanity. Never in our history has a federal government shown such disrespect for our armed forces as this one has, yet the Liberals still ride high in the polls. Our military is owed their helicopters, and we owe them an apology for letting this happen.