May 22, 2020 | Local, Aerospace
Publié le 20 mai 2020
Deux experts soutiennent que les avions utilisés par les Snowbirds sont des avions fiables, malgré leur 'ge. La question de la vétusté des CT-114 Tutor a resurgi après l'accident en Colombie-Britannique qui a coûté la vie à la capitaine Jenn Casey.
Conçu par le fabricant aéronautique Canadair dans les années 1960, le CT-114 Tutor fait partie intégrante des Forces armées canadiennes (FAC) depuis 1964. Utilisé comme avion d'entraînement, jusque dans les années 2000, le modèle est toujours utilisé par les Snowbirds, le 431e escadron de démonstration aérienne des FAC. La base d'attache des Snowbirds est à Moose Jaw, en Saskatchewan.
Aux yeux du président honoraire de l'Association de l'Aviation royale canadienne, André Deschamps, le CT-114 Tutor est un avion très robuste, bien b'ti, solide et très simple. Il est parfait pour les pilotes, car il n'y a pas trop de matériel excessif à s'occuper
.
Ancien chef d'état-major de l'Aviation royale canadienne, André Deschamps pense que l'écrasement du CT-114 des capitaines Kasey et MacDougall est dû à une perte de puissance soudaine du moteur de l'appareil.
clairement pas assez pour continuer de voler
, explique le lieutenant-général Deschamps.
Selon lui, ce défaut de propulsion de l'aéronef peut être dû à une multitude de raisons.
Outre une cause naturelle, comme un oiseau happé par la turbine de l'avion, ce type d'accident peut aussi être causé par un contaminant dans l'essence [...] Ça peut être atmosphérique, ou ça peut être un bris mécanique à l'intérieur du moteur
, note André Deschamps.
En attendant les résultats d'une enquête sur les causes exactes de l'accident tragique de Kamloops, et malgré l''ge de ce modèle d'aéronef, André Deschamps affirme qu'il est vraiment dur de remplacer cet avion, à cause de ces qualités d'opération
.
Un point de vue partagé par Mehran Ebrahimi, directeur de l'Observatoire de l'aéronautique et de l'aviation civile de l'UQAM. Même si ces avions ne sont pas éternels (...) il ne faut pas considérer que, parce que ces avions-là sont vieux, ils sont automatiquement dangereux
, précise-t-il.
Le premier ministre Justin Trudeau s'est d'ailleurs entretenu à plusieurs reprises, en fin de semaine, avec le ministre de la Défense au sujet de la sécurité et de l''ge des avions des Snowbirds, selon les informations de La Presse canadienne.
De plus, la question financière entre rapidement dans les considérations gouvernementales à ce sujet. Dans un document datant de 2015, la Défense nationale du Canada estimait le coût de remplacement des Tutor entre 500 millions et 1,5 milliard de dollars.
C'est beaucoup d'argent. Dans le contexte actuel, avec la trésorerie des gouvernements, ajoutez à cela la COVID-19, comment ça va se passer
, questionne M. Ebrahimi.
Selon André Deschamps, le remplacement des CT-114 entre dans une politique plus large de changement des avions d'entraînement pour les pilotes de chasse canadiens.
Le programme de remplacement existe. (...) Il faut allier ça avec d'autres ressources. On ne veut pas acheter une flotte unique, qui existe seulement pour les Snowbirds
, précise M. Deschamps.
Différentes options sont là, prêtes à être évaluées, selon l'ancien chef d'état-major. Il va y avoir des décisions éventuellement, dans les années prochaines. Mais pour le moment, les Tutor sont encore sains.
Une réflexion qui fait écho à un autre document de la Défense nationale du Canada, qui fait partie du Plan national de défense 2018, qui annonce la prolongation de service des CT-114 Tutor : la fin de vie des aéronefs, initialement prévue pour 2020, y est repoussée à 2030.
Le CT-114 Tutor s'est révélé une plateforme très résistante, facile à entretenir et à mettre à niveau, et dont la fonctionnalité peut être maintenue à long terme
, reconnaît la Défense nationale questionnée au sujet de ce plan de remplacement des CT-1.
Dans son courriel transmis à Radio-Canada, le gouvernement fédéral conclut : Les Forces armées canadiennes prévoient conserver les Snowbirds comme marque distinctive de l'Aviation royale canadienne
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1704413/snowbirds-ecrasement-kamloops-casey-tutor-defense
February 26, 2021 | Local, Aerospace
PAL and De Havilland Canada will jointly pursue the development of a fully missionized Dash 8-400 aircraft for maritime patrol, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
March 29, 2019 | Local, Naval
Murray Brewster · CBC News A SNC-Lavalin contract with the Department of National Defence (DND) worth half a billion dollars comes up for renewal next year — when the Montreal-based engineering giant is expected to be on trial over corruption charges. The pending expiry of the $507 million contract to support the servicing of minor warships and auxiliary vessels, signed in 2011, sharpens the debate over what a guilty verdict would mean for the Quebec-based engineering giant and whether a conviction actually would mean subjecting the company to a 10-year ban on bidding for federal contracts. The stakes are high for DND. In addition to holding an important defence contract, SNC-Lavalin has access to a range of secret military drawings, equipment and intellectual property. Although its agreements are periodically reopened to new bids, the embattled corporation has been a reliable contractor for National Defence. A survey of active federal government contracts shows DND and Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) were the two biggest users of SNC-Lavalin services and construction during the current fiscal year. Across the whole of the federal government, SNC-Lavalin holds 53 'active' federal government contracts — 25 of them with DND — with a combined value of $670 million. A company with a big federal footprint The firm signed roughly $68 million in new or renewed agreements with the federal government ($23.7 million with DND and PSPC alone) in the current budget year up to the end of December. That figure excludes what could be a large number of smaller contracts worth less than $25,000 — contracts the federal government can award without competition. An inventory of those agreements is extremely difficult to track down, but PSPC acknowledged it awarded $146,522 in minor work to SNC-Lavalin in the current fiscal year. The RCMP laid corruption charges against SNC-Lavalin and some of its units in February 2015. All the charges relate to the company's operations in Libya. The charges allege that the company offered officials in that country $47 million in bribes and accuse SNC-Lavalin and two of its subsidiaries of defrauding various Libyan public agencies of approximately $129.8 million over 10 years, starting in 2001. The company has been at the centre of a political firestorm since early February, when The Globe and Mail reported that former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould felt pressured by the Prime Minister's Office to grant the company a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) — a legal tool which would have allowed the company to avoid a criminal trial by acknowledging fault and paying a fine, among other conditions. In defending their interest in a DPA for SNC-Lavalin, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others in his government have pointed to the scale of the engineering firm's business, the possibility it could be banned from federal government work and the number of people it employs. Scott Newark, a former Crown prosecutor who teaches at Simon Fraser University, said it's been clear from the outset that avoiding the federal contract ban has been SNC-Lavalin's main objective. The question of what would happen to those federal contracts should the company be convicted is a subject of debate, however. There are policy provisions that allow federal officials to cancel existing contracts and ban future bids from a company convicted of serious crimes, such as bribery. PSPC would only say the federal government would "assess the situation" if "a supplier becomes ineligible during the life of a contract" due to a conviction. The power to terminate or suspend a contract rests with federal bureaucrats, according to PSPC's Ineligibility and Suspension Policy. A company convicted of serious crimes can avoid being fired by the feds by signing an undertaking stating "that it will conduct business with Canada in an ethical and responsible manner." But there's never a guarantee that such an undertaking will be offered to a convicted company. Just three companies are currently banned from carrying on business with the federal government — all relatively small firms in Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland. No ban on bidding during trial A spokesman for DND said there's nothing stopping SNC-Lavalin from continuing to bid on federal contracts as they appear, even during its trial. "These contracts were issued pursuant to Government of Canada contracting regulations, particularly as it concerns open, fair and transparent competitions," said Dan Le Bouthillier in an email. "Those regulations also stipulate that any company eligible to bid on Government of Canada contracts may continue to do so, so long as they meet the necessary requirements for the work." In an analysis piece for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Newark said PSPC is working on a revision of its 'integrity regime' policy to give federal officials more discretion to waive bans of individual companies contracting with the federal government. Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough has said her department is looking at eliminating fixed bidding disqualification periods and replacing them with a wholly discretionary determination — which would include the option of imposing no contracting ban at all. Even under the current system, Newark said, an order cancelling a company's federal contracts and banning it from future contracts following a conviction is far from a slam-dunk. "I checked on the Criminal Code and the Corruption of Public Foreign Officials Act and, of course, it's not in those statutes. It's not a mandatory consequence." he said. The integrity regime review has been underway in Qualtrough's department since 2017. Newark said he's amazed that nobody with the company or the federal government seems to have realized that a conviction for SNC-Lavalin could lead to something other than a 10-year contracting ban. "Why didn't anybody say, 'Hey wait a minute. We know what about this. We're changing our policy,'" he said. The head of procurement at DND attempted to reassure members of the all-party House of Commons defence committee during a hearing last month that SNC-Lavalin's "secret" work for the federal government does not pose an unacceptable risk. "We hold the intellectual property, the drawings and everything," Pat Finn testified on Feb. 28. "Irrespective of the circumstances in which the contract is terminated, we hold the material." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/snc-lavalin-s-legal-woes-are-putting-a-500m-federal-defence-contract-at-risk-1.5073996
September 25, 2018 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land
DAVID PUGLIESE, OTTAWA CITIZEN The Canadian Forces is expanding its permanent footprint in northern Canada. A new building project in Yellowknife will see the construction of a 7,600-m2 building for some of the technical services elements of the Joint Task Force North Area Support Unit, and the 1st Canadian Rangers Patrol Group Headquarters. “The technical services are for supply and materiel management, vehicle maintenance, transport, and traffic (which is mostly responsible for the movement of materiel),” Department of National Defence spokesman Andrew McKelvey noted in an email to Defence Watch. The project is in the early planning stages, with the request for proposals for the building's design expected to be tendered by mid-2019. The overall project is estimated between $50 million and $99 million and will include offices, an assembly space, which will double as a drill hall, and warehouse and garage space. There are 52 military and civilian personnel from 1 Canadian Rangers Patrol Group headquarters and 314 military and civilian personnel from Joint Task Force North currently stationed in Yellowknife. Only the Area Support Unit (North), part of Joint Task Force North, will be moving into the new building with 1 CRPG. As this project still is in the early planning stages, it is too soon to know this building's exact location, McKelvey said. Construction is expected to start in the 2020-2021 timeframe, with opening anticipated by 2024. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/canadian-forces-expands-presence-in-yellowknife