The U.S. State Department gave the green light Friday for Canada to buy more light, off-road troop transport vehicles.
The decision is likely to add to the existing political headache faced by the Liberal government, which has staked part of its reputation on making fewer defence purchases in the United States.
The approval by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency involves a purchase light tactical vehicles for the country’s special forces under a program known as Next Generation Fighting Vehicles (NGFV).
The approval comes just over a year after the Department of National Defence bought 90 joint light tactical vehicles for Canadian troops deployed in Latvia under a separate and distinct program.
The latest planned purchase — when completed — amounts to about $220 million and is part of the overall effort to re-equip the special forces and the army writ large.
The Liberal government campaigned last spring, in part, on diversifying Canadian defence purchasing away from the U.S. toward other allies. The most high-profile example was Prime Minister Mark Carney’s insistence that the $27.7-billion plan to buy F-35 fighters from U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin be reviewed.
On Friday, when announcing a military pay increase, Carney said no decision to turn away from the long-anticipated fighter jet program had been made.
A review, undertaken by the Royal Canadian Air Force, is still pending.
Lt.-Gen. Mike Wright, speaking to CBC News’s Murray Brewster while at the NATO training centre in Latvia, says the ‘army we have now is not the army that we need for the future.’
There are other programs in the pipeline that could be equally troublesome from a political perspective in light of the ongoing trade war launched by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Canada also intends to buy P-8 surveillance planes and multiple rocket launcher systems for the army from the United States, as part of the broader rearmament.
The special forces off-road vehicles have been in the serious planning stages for a couple of years, prior to the trade and political tensions with Washington.
Last December, the federal government asked the U.S. for permission to buy the vehicles.
A spokesperson for the Defence Department said there are still hurdles before an actual purchase goes ahead. Neither the request to buy, nor the recent approval “commits Canada to the purchase of the joint light tactical vehicle,” said Andrée-Anne Poulin in a written statement.
The federal government will review the acceptance and the offer to purchase.
