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Alberta Politics

unmanned aircraft falling out of the sky hurts local economy.

Meanwhile, in non-Ed Stelmach or Ted Morton resignation news, Medicine Hat Conservative MP Lavar Payne and Alderman Jeremy Thompson comment on the bizarre story of an unmanned aircraft falling out of the sky, the effects it is having on the local economy, and Ottawa’s slow response.

2 replies on “unmanned aircraft falling out of the sky hurts local economy.”

There is so much wrong with this piece, I don’t know where to begin. For one thing, DND is not responsible to the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence. DND is responsible to the Minister, Peter McKay. The Minister, in turn, is responsible to the House of Commons, and the Nat’l Defence C’tee is one forum with which the House can exercise that oversight over the Minister. But the MP for Medicine Hat can’t give any direction to, or demand accountability of, DND bureaucrats or CF personnel. He could, I suppose, ask his Committee colleagues to bring the Minister, DND officials or senior CF personnel before them to look into this, but that’s the limit of his authority in this matter.

For another, the military is not a job creation exercise; it is the sharp end of the country’s foreign policy. Its job is to put Canadian lives on the line to back it, and to kill people that oppose it. Too many Canadians forget that fundamental principle. Military decisions need to be made for military reasons, and the economic outcomes of those decisions should be secondary. If training flights of this UAV aren’t safe to carry out in Canadian cities, then the decision to move them to safer locales is a responsible military one, and economic and business considerations should be irrelevant.

As for the length of the investigation, the difference between this incident and the CF-18 crash is that the CF-18 had a live pilot who was able to eject before the crash, and could then give information on what may have happened; a UAV has no pilot to question. In addition, that other crash investigation isn’t complete either; it is just that the aircraft wasn’t grounded for the period of the inquiry.

“Military decisions need to be made for military reasons, and the economic outcomes of those decisions should be secondary.”

This is an extremely naive statement. All major military decisions are made with economic concerns being paramount. Bang for your buck is the major determining factor behind any military decision. Conflict or the threat of conflict is a major job creator. You need look no further than Military Industrial Complex in the US to see just how important economics is in deciding on military adventurism.

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