Apparently unable to stop screwing up when it comes to military spending and procurement, the Harper government has instead decided to simply keep everything under a veil of secrecy. And if anyone gets wind of how incompetent the government is, you’d better believe someone gets on the horn with the RCMP to find out who blabbed.
It turns out the Conservatives pushed the RCMP to conduct a prolonged investigation into who leaked information to the Globe and Mail about those fancy fighter jets. The government knew it wanted the F-35 jets despite the fact that they have been one of the biggest military boondoggles in history. So rather than putting the contract out for competitive bids, as is the norm, they just went with Lockheed Martin’s F-35.
When this decision was leaked to the Globe and Mail in 2010, officials pushed the RCMP to open a “national security” investigation even though there’s no way such information could possibly ever hurt national security. The Mounties admitted as much, but were even forced to re-open the witch-hunt a second time on the off chance the source of the leak could be found and, presumably, punished.
Are there really no bigger threats for the government to worry about than newspaper leaks? This wasn’t a Julian Assange caper; the information was publicly available anyway, which prompted the RCMP to finally shutter the probe. Meanwhile, who knows how much of our porn-viewing habits the Chinese government spied on? Seriously, I watch some nasty stuff on the internet. Let’s get a few more people guarding against cyber-espionage and fewer people running around chasing dead ends.
CP