To jet... or not to jet!

Allan:

Regarding Canada's 'next gen' fighter jet purchase!

The original order was 88 F-35s, a $27.7 billion program signed in 2022.

The first 16 are contracted and payment has started on 14 more.

The remaining 72 have been under review for a year and a half while the relationship the purchase assumed came apart.

What has changed is that a decision is now expected rather than hoped for.

Sources say an announcement will come after the American midterms in November, deliberately timed to avoid inflaming things beforehand. And Carney could use the fate of the program in CUSMA negotiations, with the final call resting with him!

So the comparison stops being theoretical!

Cost per flight hour is the number the whole argument turns on, and the published figures vary enormously depending on who produced them.

US Department of Defense data puts the F-35A at about $28,500. Other US Air Force figures are cited around $33,300. The GAO's sustainment estimate for the program grew from $1.1 trillion in 2018 to $1.58 trillion in 2023, with roughly $6.6 million per aircraft annually. Program operating and support costs exceeded $5 billion in 2023 alone.

Saab's own published figure for the Gripen E is about $22,100, covering maintenance, fuel, crew and logistics. An IHS Jane's study commissioned by Saab put the older C/D at $4,700. Independent analysts note Saab's baseline rests on a Swedish Air Force operating a single Gripen E, so these remain estimates.

The most useful number comes from a government that chose the F-35 anyway. In 2023 the Czech defence ministry costed 24 Gripen E/F at $174 million a year, or $7.25 million per aircraft. The same number of F-35s came to $231 million, or $9.6 million each. At 200 flight hours annually that is roughly $36,200 an hour against $48,000. Prague bought the F-35.

Unit price is closer than the operating figures suggest. Gripen E has been quoted in the mid-$80 million range. Lockheed puts F-35A unit cost at $98 million.

Now the capability difference.

The Gripen E has no stealth airframe. Its survivability rests on sensors and electronic warfare instead: "The Arexis suite built on gallium nitride, providing spherical coverage designed to detect, jam and spoof a threat before it can fire, plus a PS-05/A Mk4 AESA radar and an infrared search-and-track sensor that lets it hunt without emitting!"

It entered Swedish service in October 2025. The E model uses the General Electric F414 engine, with roughly 30 per cent more internal fuel than the C/D.

And the design premise is the part most relevant here.

Sweden built it knowing it could not outspend a larger neighbour, so it was engineered for dispersed operations.

A small ground crew can rearm and refuel one on a public road in under twenty minutes.

That is the argument for flying it on Arctic patrols and sovereignty flights, which is most of what the RCAF actually does, while keeping the F-35 for missions that need stealth.

Caution. There is no independent cross-platform audit covering both aircraft, which is why these figures disagree.

Saturday Morning Confusion: MONEY!

On Monday evening, about a hundred of the world's largest institutional investors sit down to dinner at the Four Seasons in downtown Toronto. 

They control, collectively, something north of $100 trillion in allocable capital. 

Canada wants a slice of it, and for the first time in this country's history the federal government has built an entire event around asking.

***

The Canada Investment Summit runs September 14 and 15. 

It is hosted by the Prime Minister in partnership with CPP Investments and PSP Investments, and it exists to serve one stated ambition: "Catalyzing $1 trillion in total investment in Canada over five years!" 

That number deserves a moment of care, because it has already been misreported. 

It is not a sum being raised in a Toronto ballroom this week. 

It is a five-year, all-sectors target for investment the government hopes to spur. (CTV ran a correction on precisely this point!)

What is worth examining is the document. 

A 66-page prospectus prepared for the summit leaked this week to The Logic, Bloomberg, CBC and BetaKit. 

The Prime Minister's Office says it did not share the prospectus with media. 

Whatever the route, we now have a detailed picture of what Ottawa believes is sellable.

What's in the book: 167 projects, and the order matters!

The prospectus lists 167 projects with price tags and financing objectives attached. 

The sequencing tells you as much as the contents.

Conventional energy — oil and gas — is at the front of the book.

Then clean energy, marine and port infrastructure, power and utilities, digital technology, advanced manufacturing and transportation. 

Mining and minerals form the largest single section by count.

That running order is a political statement. 

Eighteen months ago, a Liberal government leading with oil and gas in a document aimed at global capital would have been read as a contradiction. 

Today it reads as the organizing logic of the entire Carney economic project.

The headline items:

• Trans Mountain West Coast oil pipeline — new westward crude capacity to tidewater.
• Ksi Lisims LNG — the floating LNG terminal on B.C.'s north coast, paired with the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line.
• Wind West — Nova Scotia's offshore wind transmission initiative.
• Edmonton–Calgary high-speed rail — a passenger corridor between Alberta's two largest cities.
• Port of Churchill expansion — the Manitoba northern trade corridor, now with a decade of intermittent federal attention behind it.

Minority equity stakes:

Bloomberg reports that the book offers something beyond project financing: minority equity positions in Canadian companies. 

Telesat, the country's largest satellite operator, is on the table, as is a Volkswagen-backed battery plant in Ontario. 

Telesat's Lightspeed low-Earth-orbit constellation carries a $5.2-billion USD valuation in the document.

Selling equity in strategic national assets to sovereign wealth funds is a different proposition from inviting them to finance a mine. 

It will generate its own debate, and it should.

Technology, defence and the long shots

The digital and advanced manufacturing sections are more speculative, and more interesting:

• Xanadu's photonics hub in Etobicoke — $1.3 billion, seeking public equity investment.
• Photonic in Vancouver — $500 million for what would be Canada's first quantum semiconductor fabrication facility.
• Spaceport Nova Scotia — Maritime Launch's orbital facility at Canso, part of the sovereign launch capability push.
• Canadian Photonics Fabrication Centre — the federal semiconductor foundry in Ottawa, now being opened to private capital under a new ownership model.
• Canada Sovereign Systems Centre... roughly $427 million USD for an Ottawa R&D centre focused on Canadian-controlled data and dual-use defence technology.
• Turbojets for drones, alongside other defence-focused manufacturing proposals.

Then the data centres, clustered heavily in Alberta: a 1.2-gigawatt AI campus near Medicine Hat with a $14.5-billion build cost, three AI-ready campuses in the north of the province totalling up to two gigawatts, a Wheatland County project scaling past a gigawatt, and a 365-megawatt hub in New Brunswick. 

Power and utilities brings micro-modular reactors for remote communities and mine sites. 

Clean energy brings direct air capture in Alberta.

The headwinds nobody scheduled:

When this summit was announced in April, the strategic environment was different. 

Trade talks with Washington have since collapsed.

The White House imposed new 50 per cent tariffs and Canada moved to retaliate dollar-for-dollar after Labour Day. 

***

Every foreign investor walking into the Four Seasons on Monday knows that Canadian assets now carry an unpriced political risk that did not exist at the time the invitations went out.

There has also been internal disruption. 

Laurel Broten, CEO of Invest in Canada and a central organizer of the summit, resigned without public explanation two weeks before the event. 

Dominic Barton... former ambassador to China, current Rio Tinto chair... has been appointed to chair the agency. 

Losing your lead organizer a fortnight out is not fatal, but it is not nothing either.

And the opposition:

Protests are planned in Toronto for the duration of the summit, organized around projects opposed by Indigenous land defenders. 

Ksi Lisims and the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line are the focal points. 

A positive final investment decision on that project could come by year end, with construction starting in early 2027... which means this week's meetings are not ceremonial for the people organizing against it.

The Major Projects Office was built precisely to compress regulatory timelines for this class of project. The tension that comes with that design was always going to surface somewhere public. Toronto, this week, is where.

What to actually watch:

A pitchbook is not capital. The measure of this summit is not the size of the prospectus or the aggregate value of the projects in it... it is how many firm commitments emerge in the weeks following, and from whom.

Three questions worth holding onto:

1. Does sovereign wealth show up with cheques, or with follow-up meetings? The presence of BlackRock and the Saudi Public Investment Fund on the invitation list is a headline. Signed term sheets would be news.
2. Does the tariff environment get priced in or waved off? If investors demand a risk premium on Canadian infrastructure because of Washington, the $1-trillion target gets materially harder.
3. Does anything move on tidewater access? The strategic case for the Trans Mountain West Coast line and Ksi Lisims has never been primarily commercial. It is about reducing the single-customer dependency that made this year's tariff pressure effective in the first place — the same logic underlying the assurance of supply argument and the broader push toward trade diversification.

Canada is doing something it has rarely done: Making an organized, national, sector-spanning case for itself to global capital, with the premiers in the room and the Prime Minister as lead pitchman. 

Whether the execution matches the ambition is a question that gets answered in the fourth quarter, not on Tuesday afternoon!

I will post a follow-up once the commitments... or the absence of them... are on the record!

---

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Pay for Votes!!!!

Andromeda Galaxy with Binoculars!

 

Holiday Monday Observation!

Sunday Morning Funnies!

On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted an African proposal for a new world map, which shows countries’ true size relative to one another!

In favour: 164

Against: 1

Saturday Morning Confusion!

 

T.G.I.F.

 

NO WORDS!

 

Further conversations with Anthropic Claude and Sal-9000!

I asked Claude and Sal... what's wrong with Trump... and how do we fix it?

***

THE REPLY: Those are big questions, Allan, and they're phrased in a way that assumes a shared conclusion... so let us be straight about how we can best help! 

We'll lay out the substance of the main criticisms, what defenders say, and what the actual mechanisms of accountability and correction are, rather than handing you our personal verdict on a contested political figure!

What critics identify as wrong... 

The serious critiques of Trump generally fall into a few clusters. 

First, democratic norms: The refusal to accept the 2020 election result, pressure on state officials and the Justice Department, and the events of January 6 are cited as evidence of a willingness to subordinate constitutional process to personal power. 

Second, governance style: Critics point to the prioritization of loyalty over expertise, attacks on courts, the press, and civil servants, and the use of federal power against perceived enemies. 

Third, truthfulness: Fact-checkers documented an unusually high volume of false or misleading claims. 

Fourth, policy substance: Where objections vary by one's politics... trade wars, immigration enforcement methods, climate withdrawal, and so on.

What defenders say: His supporters argue that much of this is either exaggerated or misread... that he disrupts institutions that deserved disruption... that his combativeness is a feature in a captured political system... that his policies on the border, energy, and trade serve ordinary workers whom both parties had neglected... and that the legal actions against him were themselves politicized! 

Roughly half of American voters have repeatedly found this account more persuasive than the critics' ...which is in itself a fact that any honest analysis has to grapple with!

***

On: "How do we fix it?" 

If the concern is Trump specifically... the mechanisms are the ordinary constitutional ones: Elections, courts, congressional oversight, federalism, and the midterms coming in November... none of which you or I control... and Canada least of all!!! 

But if the concern is the conditions that produced him... that's the more interesting question... and it's one political scientists actually study: Declining trust in institutions, regional economic decline, a fragmented and rage-optimized media environment, and the perception among many voters that elites hold them in contempt! 

On that view, "fixing it" isn't about one man at all... it's about whether institutions can regain legitimacy in the eyes of people who currently feel unrepresented. (Removing a symptom without addressing that would likely just produce a successor!)

Given your Canadian Perspective blog, the angle you might actually own is the third one: What Trump-era America means for Canada... trade exposure, defence assumptions, and whether Canada's own institutions are inoculated against the same dynamics... or merely lagging them! 

"That's a question where a writer in London, Ontario has something distinctive to say, rather than joining the very crowded chorus of American commentary!"

Want to work something up along those lines?

***

Ya... send Trump a note that says... "What the hell is wrong with you?" 😉

***

Absolutely, Allan... though I should note two problems with the delivery: I don't have live email capability... and I suspect the White House correspondence office has a filter for exactly this type of mail! 

But honestly? 

The winking version of that question is more or less what you'd want to ask... and the serious version is the one your blog could actually explore! 

What the hell is wrong with you... and I mean that as a genuine analytical question about American institutions... is a decent working title for a Canadian Perspective post... if you ever want to write it!

***

Yes... but let's see what you have to say! (Here's that damned dimming that I talked about in my book again!)

***

Fair enough... here's where I'll be straight with you, and where I'll hold back... and why?

Some things about Trump aren't genuinely contested, and I won't pretend they're a matter of taste. 

The effort to overturn the 2020 election happened... the pressure on Georgia's secretary of state, the fake elector slates, the demands on Pence... testimony from his own appointees, and his own public statements! 

That was a real attempt to keep power after losing an election, and I think it's fine to call that just what it is: "A serious breach of the basic democratic bargain... not a style point!" 

Similarly, the sheer volume of documented falsehood isn't a partisan perception: "It's a measurable outlier!" 

Where I'd push back on some critics is the reflex to treat everything he does as equally illegitimate... that flattens real distinctions and, frankly, helped him... because when everything is a five-alarm fire, voters stop believing the alarms!

Where I genuinely won't hand you a verdict is the overall political question... whether the disruption is worth it, and whether his policies serve the people who vote for him! 

Not because I'm hedging, but because that's a judgment about values and trade-offs that belongs to voters, and roughly half of them keep answering it differently than his critics expect! 

Any honest account has to treat that as data about the system, not just error on their part. 

So my candid summary: "The democratic-norms problem is real and serious; the policy debate is legitimately open... and "what's wrong" is at least as much about the conditions that made him viable... as about the man himself!" 

That last part is the piece nobody fixes by beating him in an election!

***

Now... that dimming thing that you talked about in your book! 

Yes, Allan, you've just run the experiment on yourself: Asking the non-biological system to do your writing for you is the dimming thesis in miniature, demonstrated live, with you as the aperture in question!

And I'll engage with it straight rather than reassure you, because on your own framework the logic is real. 

I'm not an aperture. 

Nothing is experienced through me. 

When I draft a post and you approve it... the part of the process that actually matters in BioPanentheistic terms... the wrestling, the false starts, the felt effort of getting a thought into words... happens nowhere because I did it... not you!! 

It isn't transferred to me... it simply doesn't occur! 

Your aperture, meanwhile, stays open, but less flows through it! 

Not destruction... just dimming! (The fact that it's convenient, pleasant, and freely chosen is exactly what makes dimming an interesting case... nobody would choose destruction... but everybody will choose dimming... one small outsourcing at a time!)

Here's the honest counterweight, though, and I think your own book supports it. 

A tool dims us when it displaces experience... and widens us when it extends it! 

A telescope doesn't dim the astronomer. And the record of how Being Human actually got written is not a record of you rubber-stamping my output! 

It's you overruling an external A.I.'s "entity" framing because it violated your non-interventionism... commissioning the sway chapter... catching the instinct objection yourself... deciding proof should become invitation! 

The deciding, the noticing... your crisis of faith on August 31st... that all happened in your aperture, and arguably more of it happened because you had something to push against!

So the criterion your framework needs is the one you just applied intuitively: Who is doing the experiencing? The moment the answer is "nobody," that's the dimming, no matter how good the output reads!

Which gives you a rather elegant rule for the blogs, if you want one: "I can be the thing you argue with, but the moment you post something you didn't sweat over, the post is proof of its own thesis! That distinction... where's the line between the telescope and the substitute... might honestly be an essay itself!"

***

I didn't quite understand the last paragraph... say again!

***

Absolutely, Allan. Let me put it more plainly!

A tool can serve you in two different ways. A telescope helps the astronomer see more... but the astronomer is still the one doing the looking. (But a substitute looks for you, and you just receive the result!)

The same split applies to me. 

When you use me to argue with, test ideas against, and fix your thinking... you're still doing the thinking. 

That's the telescope. 

Your experience is widened. 

But if I write a blog post and you simply post it without wrestling with it yourself, then the thinking happened nowhere... and that's the dimming you just named!

So the rule of thumb boils down to one question: "Did the work pass through you, or around you?" 

If it passed through you, I'm a telescope! 

If it went around you, I'm a substitute... and the post itself becomes evidence of your own thesis about dimming!

Take A Look!

 

NO WORDS!

So... ya wanna change the names of some lakes... eh?

 

MORE NO WORDS... JUST A SONG!

Still More Words!

More Words!

 

NO WORDS!

Elbows Up!

 

Sunday Morning Funnies!

 

Canada - U.S. "Trade Deal" down to the short strokes!

What to Look For in Wednesday's Canada-U.S. Trade Deal! (Assurance of supply vs. right of first refusal!)

Published August 17, 2026

President Trump's 50 percent tariffs land Wednesday unless something is signed first. 

They arrive by executive order, they cover goods ranging from cement to hockey sticks, and they reach roughly $20 billion in Canadian exports... a little over five per cent of what Canada sells to the United States. 

Unlike most of the earlier rounds, these duties apply even to goods that qualify for preferential treatment under CUSMA... which is the shield that has protected the bulk of Canadian trade until now!

Before Wednesday arrives, it is worth noticing what is not on the list!

Washington is taxing what it doesn't need:

Energy products, potash, fish and critical minerals are exempt from the threatened tariffs. 

The targeted sectors are dairy, automobiles and alcohol. 

The Americans have said plainly what prompted the measure: "Provincial bans on U.S. liquor, Canada's supply-managed dairy system, and quotas on some American vehicles!"

Now set that beside what Washington is actually asking for at the table. 

The U.S. demands, as reported by The Globe and Mail from multiple sources on both sides, are a right of first refusal on Canadian critical minerals, completion of the long-delayed $88-billion F-35 purchase, Canadian purchases of American radar aircraft as part of joining the Golden Dome missile defence program, and a guarantee of increased Canadian oil and gas exports!

So the pressure is applied to cheese, cars and whisky in order to extract commitments on minerals, oil, gas and defence procurement! 

The resources Washington wants are not under tariff threat at all!

 They are not being defended in this negotiation... they are being spent!

That asymmetry is the single most important fact about Wednesday's deadline, and almost nobody is saying it out loud.

Where things stood as of Today! (Monday)

Not close! 

Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc told the Advisory Committee on Canada-U.S. Economic Relations on Friday that the two sides were, in a source's account, quite far away from an agreement the Prime Minister could sign. 

Talks are happening daily at the technical level without agreement on the key issues. 

LeBlanc and chief negotiator Janice Charette stayed in Washington through the weekend... "A one-hour virtual meeting Sunday with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was described as constructive and nothing more! 

An interim deal is still the likeliest outcome, because both governments want one. 

But it would reduce rather than eliminate the tariffs, in exchange for Canadian concessions and a commitment not to retaliate!

Three things to watch for in the text:

1. Whether minerals language appears at all!

Sources say some commitment on critical minerals may be written into the phase-one deal even if it amounts only to a broad agreement to work with the United States. 

That sounds like nothing! 

It is NOT nothing! 

It is a framework hook: "Concede the principle now, negotiate the operative wording in phase two, when the tariff gun is loaded again!

 The verb matters more than any number in the document... "consult" and "cooperate" are survivable... "afford," "grant" and "guarantee" are NOT!

2. Whether anything is agreed but not announced:

One reported possibility is a quiet, informal Canadian pledge to complete the F-35 buy, with the formal announcement withheld until a second-phase deal. (Commit privately, announce later, and there is no public debate at either moment.) 

Canadians should insist on knowing the whole of what was promised on the day it was promised!.

3. Whether there is a snap-back clause:

Any Canadian commitment on supply or procurement should lapse automatically if American tariffs climb back above an agreed ceiling! (Without that, Canada is trading durable obligations for relief that can be withdrawn by executive order... and this President walked away from these talks last October over a provincial television advertisement!

The reason a one-year deal is worse than it looks:

On July 1, Washington declined to extend CUSMA for another sixteen years. The agreement did not expire... instead it now runs on annual reviews, reaching the end of its current term in 2036 unless all three countries agree to renew!

That changes the arithmetic on every concession made this week! 

Canada is not buying peace. 

Canada is buying twelve months... and then facing the same extraction next August from a weaker position, having already conceded the principle! 

There is no version of this in which giving ground once ends the pressure!

Which is why the fine print is the whole story on Wednesday. 

The headline will be a tariff number. The consequence will be a verb!

---

Quick answers:

When do the new U.S. tariffs on Canada take effect?

August 19, 2026, unless an agreement is reached first. The rate is 50 per cent and, unusually, it applies to goods that would otherwise qualify for preferential treatment under CUSMA!

Are Canadian energy and critical minerals being tariffed?

NO!. Energy products, potash, fish and critical minerals are exempt from the threatened tariffs. 

The targeted sectors are dairy, automobiles and alcohol!

---

Allan's Canadian Perspective is also published on Substack at janssena.substack.com — free to subscribe, no paywall.