Moonbox

Well said. Exactly how I see things. With no export market for the Arrow, nothing was going to keep it afloat.

A lot of people had their heads in their asses. The project was ill-conceived, regardless of how well designed it was. That's my main problem with all the Arrow worshipers out there. It was a nice shiny piece of useless aircraft that history has proven to be have been obsolete on the drawing board. Yes, it killed our military aerospace industry and maybe there was a better way of doing it. With that said, the Arrow project needed to be killed. When people start talking about how we have nothing but a resource economy, I can come up with dozens of big companies manufacturing and researching interesting things. Bombardier is still making planes and is basically on top of rail car transportation right now. RIM is a world leader in communication technology. Ottawa and KW are giant hubs of high tech industry and research. We STILL have the know-how and capability to build and design ANYTHING here in Canada. The question is do we have the economies of scale and government support to do so? Not at all and no Canadian government has stepped forward to offer it.

I was responding to Wild Bill's claim that the company built the world's first airliner and was forced to shelve the project by the Canadian government. There was nothing wrong with the PLANE. It was a good plane for what it was intended to do. The problem with concept and implementation was the ROLE the plane was intended to do. You could design a Mach 2.5 bicycle and it could have the best technology in the world put into it. It would be remarkable but it would also be useless. The Arrow project died for the same reason soldiers don't carry shields into battle anymore. Soldiers are worried about bullets and shrapnel now, not getting their arms chopped by a zweihander. Similarly, modern militaries count ICBM's as the biggest trans-continental threat, not fleets of prohibitively expensive bombers flying across the ocean to drop bombs. My beef with the Arrow project was how BAD an idea it was to design THAT PARTICULAR type of plane in the first place. I'll agree it wasn't the design team's fault. They did a good job. The blame lies on whoever specified WHAT was to be built. That wasn't Dief.

I still think Harper should have let the coalition take over. History shows that governments leading during a recession generally don't fare well in the next election. Harper should have stepped aside, let the Liberals take the blame for massive deficits, and then come back like a saviour. This is what the Liberals should and probably will do. I don't understand why anyone would want to be in charge right now.

How does it not fix the facts? If someone wanted the Arrow they could have kept the company in business by putting deposits down for orders! That's how these sorts of things work! You like to argue by cold hard facts and the ones we have are that the company went out of business. Nobody put money up to keep the business running in anticipation for buying the Arrow. The US military did not develop a similar interceptor of its own and has not since. This is simple reality. Okay....so you have a company successfully building and selling airliners and they're forced to discontinue production for an ill-conceived and poorly implemented interceptor by the previous Liberal government. How is Dief responsible for that? It would have been the same as propping up the auto industry...it would have cost the same amount of money but would have saved a WAY smaller industry and provided a useless final product or (should they have started again from scratch on a new plane) an unknown product with no guarantee of success.

Jerry I understand what you're saying. It's a nice story to know Canada had the capability to develop its own defence systems. The problem was that it was terribly implemented. Yes, we ended up with an excellent design and good technology. The problem was there was no demand for that technology and that's something that the Canadian government should probably have examined a fair bit further before proceeding with the project in the first place. I realize it cost the tax payers money and jobs to cancel the program and that the Bomarc missile system ended up being a bust itself. Having said that the US wanted nothing to do with the Arrow and the Canadian military was pressured into integrating continental missile defense with that of the US. Like you said, the Canada was a small player. Unless you can get foreign countries to buy a small nation's weapons, developers are NOT going to survive. Because of the huge costs of R&D and infrastructure you need to sell enough units to make a project worthwhile. When no western powers indicated any interest in the Arrow, Avro officially had too small a market. It was a total cluster**** of mistakes and I can easily grant you that, but the whole myth of government conspiracy and vindictiveness is tinfoil hat talk. If Avro had designed a cutting edge air-air superiority fighter the US and Britain etc I'm sure would have bought on. Instead, they designed a plane whose role was no longer needed. That was the SINGLE most important mistake of the whole debacle and it counted for EVERYTHING.

and keeping the Arrow program going would have cost the taxpayers even more. We would have ended up with planes we'd have no use for. Spending tax payer dollars to build things people don't need is a BAD strategy. Yes it can make sure jobs are kept but in the end the average tax payer is not better off. Jerry please look a bit more into this very simple question. It's all I ask of you: IF it was just an idiotic and vindictive decision on Dief's part then why on Earth did the vast majority of the world's militaries (including the United States, the world's premier military power) cancel all similar projects? If the role is still needed, why are no militaries develloping pure long range bomber interceptors? The bottom line here is that with the coming of ICBM's the threat of giant long range bomber fleets crossing the ocean dissapeared. There wasn't going to be any defence anymore against nuclear attack and MAD led to the mexican standoff of the Cold War. Nobody with the capability to send long range bombers across the ocean was going to attack North America and this is still the case today. The world's militaries decided that it was smarter and more cost effective to build multi-purpose fighters that could fulfill limited high altitude and high speed interception roles along with dog fighting or air to ground support rolls instead of a pure interceptor. Since the Arrow was so far along when it was cancelled and because there was no way to turn the airframe into something altogether different.

Yes...trying to bolster the economy by investing in a housing market already well over capacity seems like a really good idea to me. While we're at it let's build some new Chevrolet and GM plants here.

Well said. Having Canadians a whole world away condemning Israel for doing whatever it can to protect itself is absolutely contemptible.

Go read a book because you're not going to find anything reputable on the internet really. I think the R&D costs for the Arrow were well over $100-200 million alone. When you factor inflation and the cost per aircraft being built we're easily looking a billions and billions for an airplane that history has proven most militaries had no interest in and did not need. Keeping the Arrow in production would have been nothing more than a multi billion charity.

It's true. A consumption tax hurts the poor immensely. At least with income taxes a lot of their income is untaxable anyways. With consumption tax increases basically EVERY dollar the poor earn gets fully taxed because it's fully spent. Consumption taxes can also be easily avoided by more well-off people. They can just take their income and turn it into savings instead of spending it. Obviously they will spend it eventually either way but for someone who's trying to pay off debt or save for retirement you'd see a HUGE reduction in spending and increased savings and debt retirement.

You can't put any political spin on the fact that there was zero demand in the western world for the Arrow which in hindsight would have been obsolete when it entered production anyways. Also, not to be snide but I think you REALLY have to take an Avro insider's view of the situation with a grain of salt. That's kind of like taking a GM or Chevrolet employee's view on the auto fiasco as reputable. I'll agree it looked like they tried to dust everything under the carpet, but the reasons for cancelling the project were legit. Those 25,000 jobs were costing the Canadian taxpayers billions to maintain. It was a good decision to pull the plug. If people are holding grudges against Tory governments of 50 years ago for making an intelligent decision that's totally their perogative. It really limits the options, however, and is a perfect example of blind and stupid voting.

Haha exactly. I think a lot of the opinions on this thread are based entirely on that alone. Sadly for them 50% of it was completely made up and possibly very politically motivated. The fact is that NOBODY wanted the AVRO and history is also on the side of that decision because war as it has evolved has shown a COMPLETE lack of need for high speed high altitude interceptors.

They had a working prototype. Avro scrambled desperately to find buyers for the project. They found none. The merits of the project weren't worth extending it further. The Americans had a similar project at the time. It was called the Rapier. Its role and performance would have been about the same as the Arrow. THEY cancelled their project as well. The Avro's role was too limited and too focused to have remained in service. The role was too intercept and shoot down Soviet long range bombers (kind of like the B-52). By the late 50's it was already apparent that the long range bomber was becoming less and less a threat and long range ballistic missiles and ICBM's were the new inter continental threat. The Avro was not a dog fighter. It was not a multi-role fighter. It would have become a high speed interceptor with nothing to intercept and it was not suited for any other role. I don't 'believe' because I know it was a giant waste of money and an excellent example of poor planning. The Arrow WAS a revolutionary design for the role it was intended. The sad fact, however, was that the role was no longer needed and has not been needed since. Take a look at the fighters of today. None of them are long range bomber interceptors. They were all designed for air superiority and multi-role bombing.

I think the guidelines definetly need to be made more strict.

whowhere you're being foolish or you're totally wrong on basically every point. Let's examine: Your lazy and uninformed rants unfortunately lead one to this conclusion.... Or they live in crap holes that don't give them the opportunity to succeed like they could here. There is a CRAPTON of immigrants making huge money and a lot of their children do even better. Yes, refugee families coming over here are likely not going to succeed and will just drain the system but that leads us to our next point... The open-door immigration policy you complain about is LIBERAL policy. I've tried telling you a dozen times before but the conservatives have tried to reform immigration policy so we take LESS unqualified immigrants and replace those spots with immigrants more likely to become productive citizens. Stress yourself out all you want. This is 'poor me' syndrome at its worst. You have yourself to blame for your current economic situation. Blaming general ethnic minorities for your inability to compete in the work environment is about as intelligent as blaming someone nearby when you trip on your own shoe lace.

For profit is often the answer. Good paying government union jobs only benefit the union workers. There's a reason why public service unions receive so little public support when they go on strike. Personally, I don't feel that I should be paying higher taxes so that I can help ensure under qualified and unskilled workers earn far more than their skills would otherwise dictate.

'Opportunistic Purveyor of Untruths' is a label you can put on EVERY (repeat that in your head a few times) politician in Canadian politics right now. An election is basically a contest on who can better fool the ignorant electorate. Harper, Ignatieff, Dion, Layton are ALL guilty of giant hypocrisy and lies. It's silly to argue against that simple fact. At the same time, until the average voter spends more than 30 minutes a year paying attention to politics, it's even sillier to be outraged when a politician is not entirely truthful all the time.

Harper is a pragmatic hypocrite. I think it's fairly obvious by now...

Haha. That's hilarious. Liberal/Green coalition. If anyone needs an example for why you shouldn't take Informed Vote seriously, this it it. Personally, I've never been a fan of news written by angsty adults who never really grew out of their teenage years. Maybe that's just me though.

Why is this thread still even alive? The Avro Arrow was cancelled and scrapped for a reason. It was NOT because the government was stupid at the time. The only thing that was stupid was allowing the project to continue as long as it did. Why do you think that there were no foreign buyers for the project? The Arrow was obsolete or redundant with most of the world's militaries at the time. People's opinions on the Arrow seem largely to have been nurtured by an assanine CBC special from 15 years ago or whatever. Get over it already.

It's a silly and implausible scenario. Their right to exist is now firmly planted in the fact that they ARE there now and nobody in the area has the ability to remove them. The 'real' scenario is that the Palestinians and Arab nations in the area benefit more now from the UN than Israel does. Israel now could clear out all of its neighbours. It's a stupid scenario to consider seeing as though Israel could, should it feel the need, deny its neighbours the right to exist while they have ZERO capability to do the reverse. Check your history. Civilization started about 1000km or more to the east...around where Iraq is now. With that said, humanity had migrated all over Europe, Asia and Africa (likely North America by then too) by the time Babylon started. Besides, there we people living everywhere in the world already before this happened....so really you're totally wrong there. More like the British decided this. That wasn't my question either. My question was now that they're there, how do you contest that their claim is any weaker than anyone else's? You deny the right for Israel to exist. From what you've said, it's because there are angry people all around them that don't want them there. You'll have to do better than that. The question now is what's the more INTELLIGENT solution? You have: A ) Try to remove a wealthy, established population armed to the teeth from a land to which they have both historic and religious ancestry or B ) Accept that they do have the right to exist, stop firing rockets at them and try to work peacefully with them. There's no possible way to respond intelligently to this.

The deficit wasn't going to be avoided regardless but the lying...well you've got him there.

and you have zero (yes zero) real justification for that position... Some people's history tie into it quite a bit more than others'. What island in the ocean is big enough and hospitable enough to provide for the Jewish nation? If there are any empty, unclaimed and bountiful islands out there let me know. We can start our own country there. And why Israel? It's easier to justify settling them there than anywhere else in the world. Something like 4000 years of Jewish history lead to that decision. Whatever 'claim' the Palestinians or Arabs had for that land was by far and away preceded by a Jewish claim. Who decides whose claim is stronger? Do we say that the 60 years of Israeli occupation makes the claim legitimate, strenghtened by the 100 years or whatever of British claim? Or the 600-700 years of Arab occupation before that? Do we go back to the Romans who occupied it for something like 400 years? The Jews before that for 4000? What do you do now? Seriously? The same could be said about the Palestinians living in Israel and the surrounding area. Israel also has the capability to wipe the floor with ANY of their neighbours, including Egypt. It's not just because of $3B or whatever in US aid. Their military training, research and spending is EXTREME.

Left wing? What? How is that left wing? I find the whole anti-Israel sentiment in the West to be very ironic. If you contemplated Jewish history for a second, maybe you'd understand a bit better. We've got an entire race/religion of people with literally thousands of years of history. In that whole time they've probably never had a safe place to call home. They were finally granted a place to live in their ANCESTRAL HOMELAND and now their neighbours one and all demand they be wiped off the face of the planet....AGAIN. Here people are now, speaking critically of THEIR discrimination against Arabs!??!?? How can WE in Canada or North America possibly judge their right to defend themselves??? It's not like they're inventing the danger. It's there. It's real...and Jewish Israelis are dying on a regular basis from it. They don't have the luxury of being politically correct. Their families and lives are legitimately at stake. Unlikely to happen so why bring it up??