Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

Public relations

by Aaron Wherry on Thursday, February 17, 2011 9:12am - 10 Comments

David Pugliese looks at the campaign to sell the F-35 purchase.

Figures obtained by the Liberals show public servants at National Defence headquarters charged taxpayers at least 600 hours of overtime to organize a news conference and seven events to promote the purchase of the F-35 aircraft to defence analysts, academics and some industry representatives … Defence Department sources have told the Ottawa Citizen some officers have been uncomfortable with the situation but the military is being pressured by the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister’s Office to spearhead the sales effort.

Tags: David Pugliese, Defence Department, F-35, Joint Strike Fighter, military, prime minister's office

More by Aaron Wherry

TJCook

If only their focus on good procurement practices matched their focus on PR…
Emily

Hard to sell a pig-in-a-poke these days. Especially when it's married to a white elephant.
McC_

Running a simulation: assume an average $80K salary for mid-career, upper-mid level professionals means $40/hr for 600hrs at time-and-a-half = $36K in overtime. This isn't that much money, but if the federal public service is supposed to be pinching pennies to return us to fiscal balance, this isn't how we should do it.

Bill M

The story says the amount is thought to be more than $200k.

McC_

Someone didn't read the article. the $200K figure includes travel costs, including for ministerial delegations (which get expensive indeed!), "Indications are that the figure, which includes cabinet ministers visiting aerospace firms to promote the F-35 purchase, is more than $200,000," whereas my scenario was just looking at the 600 hours of overtime (which were the subject of this blog post). The only public servants whose salaries are high enough that 600 hours of overtime would add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars are the highest executives, and executives don't get compensated for overtime (they do get performance bonuses).

Dubh

See: "The silent US hand guiding Canada's F-35 debate" http://www.embassymag.ca/page/view/taylor-02-09-2…
"Thanks to recent revelations made public via WikiLeaks, it is safe to surmise that the U.S. State Department is the unseen puppeteer making Harper do the F-35 dance. The embarrassing documents contain American diplomatic correspondence detailing how they used a public 'carrot' and a private 'stick' approach to convince Norway to buy the F-35."

And the latest from yesterday's NYT: "House Votes to End Alternate Jet Engine Program" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/us/politics/17-…
"The Joint Strike Fighter is the nation's most expensive weapons program, and eliminating the alternate engine would be one of the most noteworthy cancellations this year… The vote was a victory for President Obama and the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, who had called the engine 'an unnecessary and extravagant expense.'… As costs have risen on the F-35 program, Mr. Gates has said the alternate engine seemed more a luxury than a necessity. And it is possible that the Pentagon and several allied nations will not end up buying as many of the planes as they expected.
john g

The Liberals do have a point here. It was so much easier and more efficient buying planes when the procurement process was that you just waited till the last day of the budget year then shoveled $100M to your friends at Bombardier to buy a couple of jets.
gottabesaid

As an aside, it's interesting to note from your link that the Challenger Jet purchase was actually made by the Liberal government of the day AGAINST staff recommendation — the bureaucrat suggested NOT spending money on the jets. And they had a $7 billion budget surplus at the time. Restraint in the public service? Who'd have thunk it! A very small bright spot in an otherwise slimy affair.
LdKitchenersOwn

Remind me again what the Tory position on sole-sourcing the contract for THOSE jets was again?

'Cause I'm pretty sure the Conservatives thought that was horrible, and pledged never to do anything like that themselves if they ever got in to power.
john g

Yeah. That recommendation was hardly surprising though given who it was made to (Chief of Defence Staff) and that the military were still looking for Sea King replacements. I can only imagine the Code Red that would be given to a military officer that justified the Challenger replacement over the actual needs of the military.