This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Richard Shimooka, November 18, 2025
Canada will be getting new fighter jets. That much is certain. What is still unclear is who will supply them: Will the order solely consist of American-made F-35s produced by Lockheed Martin? Or will there be other contenders brought in to supplement the F-35s we’ve already purchased and create a mixed fleet of fighters?
Canada had already, in 2022, selected the F-35 as its CF-18 replacement, and has to date purchased 16 aircraft of the 88 originally ordered. However, rising trade tensions with the Trump administration have put the fate of the remaining 72 aircraft in limbo. The government has delayed endorsing the purchase of the rest of the jets, while Canada’s Secretary of State for Defence Procurement Stephen Fuhr has reiterated that there is no timeline on when a government review of the purchase will be completed.
Comments from the government over this past weekend have signalled an openness to consider other options, including encouraging bids that would create jobs here in Canada in the process. Industry Minister Melanie Joly has gone further, explicitly calling on Lockheed Martin to improve the industrial benefits to Canada in its offer.
Seizing on the opportunity, defence firms have begun jockeying to get into the mix.
Few actors have been as active in this space as the Swedish defence contractor Saab. Over the past six months, the company has waged an active campaign promoting its Gripen E tactical fighter jet.
All companies lobby. It’s the nature of the process. For defence manufacturers to win business, they need to make the government aware of their offerings and gauge potential requirements. However, Saab’s overall strategy goes far beyond that—it is actively introducing disinformation into the Canadian market to sell its products. This reckless strategy only has one potential winner: Saab. And regardless of the outcome, Canada will suffer the consequences.
Saab’s product is simply not well-suited for Canada’s needs in comparison to the F-35. It lost the Future Fighter Capability competition two years ago, and every other competition it has had, head-to-head with the F-35. The Gripen is unable to win on the actual merits of cost, capability, or even industrial benefits. Thus, over the past decade, Saab has regularly turned to muddying the waters for the government, aiming to get it to disregard its own expert advice and turn political and public opinion to its side.
A good example of this occurred last week, when Saab’s CEO Micael Johansson stated that licensed production could lead to 10,000 jobs in Canada and create more strategic autonomy—music to Joly’s ears. That’s a curious claim to make, however, considering 1) Saab Aerospace’s total workforce totals a mere 8,000, and 2) it is exceptionally unlikely Canada would ever undertake full production. Saab does not even produce the majority of the Gripen’s components by value. The avionics and engines are manufactured by the U.S. firms Collins Aerospace and General Electric, and the radar by Leonardo of Italy.
A more realistic scenario for personnel numbers is found in Brazil, which also assembles Gripens in-country. There, it only employs approximately 260 individuals. Moreover, Gripen’s supply chain is heavily dependent on the U.S. for its critical components, which completely undermines any argument for increased strategic autonomy in choosing Saab over Lockheed Martin.
One of the most egregious lies being peddled is the claim that the Gripen costs roughly $5,000 per hour to operate compared to tens of thousands of dollars for the F-35, which plays to the narrative that the F-35 and other fighters are bloated, incapable aircraft. What few people realize is that this comes from a 2012 Saab-funded study and does not hold up to scrutiny—the Gripen’s fuel usage alone would account for nearly that amount.
The reality is that when Saab is required to provide verifiable, binding data for a competition, the disinformation falls away. This was evident during the Finnish fighter competition that selected the F-35 over the Gripen. In its evaluation of the operational cost, it stated:
The F-35 solution fitted to the allocated funding frame was the most cost-effective. The F-35 had the lowest procurement cost when considering all aspects of the offer…No offer was significantly less expensive than others in operating and sustainment costs.
The Government of Canada’s own evaluation came to the same conclusion.
The only true source of expert advice on this matter is the government’s personnel, who have direct expertise in this field. Every single piece of internal data affirms that choosing the Saab fighters would be a disastrous idea. A 2014 analysis by Defence Research Development Canada stated: “Mixed fighter fleets comparable in size to the single fighter fleet will likely result in lower overall capability, at a higher cost.” In the decade since that report’s publication, the capability gap has only widened dramatically.
Both Deputy Minister Stephanie Beck and Commander of the Air Force Jamie Speiser-Blanchet have unequivocally stated the need for a fifth-generation fighter (which the Gripen is not), and dispelled the notion that the U.S. possesses a “kill switch” on the F-35. In a state with a mature defence discourse, such as the U.S. or the U.K., this would have put the issue to bed. But not Canada. Here, Saab’s ridiculous misrepresentations find fertile ground, passing with little public scrutiny owing to the abject poverty of defence literacy in Canada.
Saab routinely lobbies politicians who have no practical experience in this area, like Joly, or who have pre-existing biases against the current policy, like Fuhr. Those individuals then mobilize others using the very same seductive yet threadbare reasoning in order to pressure the PMO. Bringing the Swedish royalty to head a sales delegation to Canada is the epitome of this strategy—this is not about capability, it’s about political influence.
If this goes through, this will be a boondoggle far outstripping the recent EV investment disasters. Producing a mixed fleet mainly made up of Gripens would waste tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and have deleterious consequences to Canadian national security. It would deliver to the RCAF a fighter in a decade’s time which is no more effective than the current 45-year-old modernized CF-18, but one expected to operate for the next 40 years in an increasingly lethal threat environment.
Major allies, not just the United States, would be right to question Canada’s actual commitment to defence, considering how poorly conceived this decision would be. Indeed, an unsurprising outcome would be to see a later government, after sober reflection, outright cancel the purchase. Still, even if an order does not go through, Saab’s campaign will only undermine the public’s perception of the current selection.
Two successive governments have come to regret not choosing the right path on fighters. Peter McKay said as much directly about his government’s failure to push through the F-35. Similarly, the Trudeau government eventually saw the light and selected the aircraft after vowing not to in 2015. Carney’s government is flirting with a decision that would far exceed those errors—one can only hope it quickly comes to its senses and ends this entire farce.
Richard Shimooka is a Hub contributing writer and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who writes on defence policy.
