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Sur le même sujet

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  17 janvier 2019 | Local, Aérospatial

  Airbus n'écarte pas la possibilité d'assembler des avions de chasse au Québec

  La Presse canadienne Airbus n'écarte pas la possibilité que le Québec puisse accueillir une chaîne de montage d'avions de chasse ainsi qu'un lieu destiné à la construction de satellites si le géant européen parvient à décrocher de nouveaux contrats au Canada. Ces scénarios ont été évoqués lundi par le président des activités canadiennes de la multinationale, Simon Jacques, lors d'un événement organisé par la multinationale à Mirabel, dans les Laurentides, où s'effectue l'assemblage des appareils A220, nés de la C Series de Bombardier. Airbus convoite notamment l'appel d'offres du gouvernement canadien, qui devrait être lancé avant le début de la prochaine campagne électorale, pour l'achat de 88 avions de chasse visant à remplacer ses CF-18 vieillissants. Airbus propose l'Eurofighter Typhoon. « Absolument », a répondu M. Jacques lorsqu'il lui a été demandé si la chaîne de montage pourrait se trouver au Québec. « Nous évaluons nos options. » En plus d'Airbus, les entreprises Boeing, Lockheed Martin et Saab ont été retenues par le gouvernement canadien. « La construction d'une nouvelle ligne d'assemblage, qui entraînerait la création de nombreux emplois, ne serait pas un casse-tête logistique étant donné qu'il y a de l'espace de disponible à Mirabel, dans les Laurentides, où s'effectue l'assemblage de l'avion A220 », a expliqué M. Jacques. Puisque l'appel d'offres devrait imposer du contenu local, le dirigeant d'Airbus au Canada a dit vouloir proposer une « solution canadienne ». Déjà un lien L'actionnaire majoritaire de l'A220 a décroché son premier contrat d'envergure en 2016 avec Ottawa, qui lui a commandé 16 avions de recherche et de sauvetage, une entente de 2,4 milliards de dollars, en plus de 2,3 milliards en entretien et service après-vente pour 20 ans. Le premier de ces appareils doit être livré d'ici la fin de l'année. Les CF-18 mis en service dans les années 1980 devaient être retirés d'ici 2020, mais leur remplacement s'est transformé en une longue saga. Il y a six ans, le gouvernement Harper a abandonné dans la controverse son projet d'acheter des avions de chasse F-35 sans appel d'offres pour remplacer cette flotte vieillissante. Le gouvernement Trudeau, qui avait par la suite décidé d'acheter 18 avions Super Hornet à Boeing également sans appel d'offres, a annulé cet achat en 2017 dans la foulée du conflit commercial entre Boeing et Bombardier à propos de la C Series. D'ici à ce que ce contrat se concrétise, Ottawa s'est tourné vers l'Australie pour acheter des avions de chasse provisoires. D'après M. Jacques, le Canada est « vraiment engagé » à « stimuler la concurrence », ce qui pourrait ouvrir une porte à un autre constructeur que l'américaine Boeing. « Je pense que c'est important pour le Canada d'avoir une flotte différente de ce qu'il y a aux États-Unis [avec Boeing], a-t-il dit. [Cela serait] une bonne chose pour le NORAD [Commandement de la défense aérospatiale de l'Amérique du Nord]. » Citant l'exemple du Royaume-Uni, qui est client d'Airbus et de Lockheed Martin pour sa flotte, M. Jacques a soutenu que rien n'empêchait le Canada de faire de même. Des satellites en plus? Parallèlement au dossier des avions de combat, le dirigeant d'Airbus a mentionné que l'entreprise pourrait se tourner vers le Québec pour la construction de satellites si sa proposition est retenue par Télésat Canada, un exploitant de satellites de télécommunication. Cette entreprise avait sollicité des offres à Airbus et à Thales pour le lancement en orbite « d'entre 300 et 500 satellites », selon M. Jacques, dans le cadre d'un projet entourant l'accès à Internet. « Cela viendrait changer la donne au Québec », a-t-il lancé, en évoquant au passage la création de quelque 200 emplois. Airbus dit échanger avec différents ordres de gouvernement, dont Québec et Ottawa, dans le but de s'installer dans la province si la multinationale obtient le contrat. https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1146770/airbus-possibilite-assembler-avions-chasse-quebec

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  8 mai 2019 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense

  Scheer rolls out an ambitious defence agenda, but critics ask: Where's the money?

  Murray Brewster · CBC News A little joke used to make its way around the Harper Conservative government every time National Defence presented Andrew Scheer's former boss with the bills for new equipment — about how Stephen Harper would emit an audible 'gulp' of alarm when they crossed his desk. Scheer, in the first of a series of election-framing speeches for the Conservatives, pledged yesterday to wrap his arms around Canada's allies, take the politics out of defence procurement, buy new submarines, join the U.S. ballistic missile defence program and expand the current military mission in Ukraine in an undefined way. What was absent from the Conservative leader's speech — a greatest-hits medley of road-tested Conservative policy favourites, blended with jabs at the Trudeau government's record — was an answer to the first question his supporters usually ask on these occasions: How are you going to pay for it? Deficit hawk or defence hawk? The Liberals have set the federal government on course to increase defence spending by 70 per cent by 2027. The cost of what Scheer is proposing — submarines and missile defence — would have to be shoehorned into that framework somehow. Either that, or he'd have to radically redesign the current defence spending program. Scheer's speech was greeted with raised eyebrows by more than one defence sector observer. "When he starts talking about deficits, you can kiss all that goodbye," said Stephen Saideman, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University. "In other speeches, he talked about being a deficit hawk. That would have real implications for the defence stuff." The Harper government increased defence spending during the Afghan war and made a series of promises to revitalize the military, but ended up cutting its budget and postponing projects in order to eliminate the deficit. 'Harper all over again' Saideman said Scheer's speech did not offer an ironclad guarantee that he'd avoid doing the same thing, and was even inaccurate in its characterization of the Liberals' record on defence spending. A full half to two-thirds of the defence and foreign policy vision Scheer laid out, he said, was "Harper all over again" — but with some surprising differences. His embrace of allies was much warmer than it was with the previous Conservative crowd, which tended to look upon NATO with a jaundiced eye. "I will reinvigorate Canada's role in the alliances we share with our democratic allies. This includes existing alliances like NORAD, NATO, the Commonwealth, La Francophonie and the Five Eyes, but it will also include overtures to India and Japan," Scheer said. He also pledged a Conservative government would do more in Eastern Europe. "This will include expanding upon the current missions to support Ukraine and providing Ukraine's military with the equipment they need to defend their borders," said the Conservative leader. Scheer didn't say in his speech what he wants Canada to do in Eastern Europe that it isn't doing now — short of putting combat troops on the front line of Ukraine's breakaway eastern districts, or selling offensive weapons to Kiev. Scheer did promise to take the lead on a potential United Nations peacekeeping mission, a proposal that has been out there in the international community for months and has largely gone nowhere. Other ideas that often go nowhere filled out the rest of Scheer's speech — like the promise of a fix for the Canadian military's complex, cumbersome system for buying equipment. Politicians are to blame, Scheer said. "Military procurement in Canada is hyper-politicized, to our detriment," he said. "By playing politics with these matters, governments have diminished the important responsibility to adequately and expediently equip the Armed Forces." To accept that argument, one must set aside his party's favourite rallying cry during the politically blistering F-35 debate of half a dozen years ago: If you don't support the plane, you don't support the troops. Politics-free procurement? Michael Byers, a University of British Columbia defence policy expert, said removing politics from procurement decisions would be a fantastic step forward, one that could save taxpayers boatloads of money by doing away with pet projects and regional interests. "It's an admirable goal, but he would be the first prime minister ever to take the politics out of defence procurement," he said. "So, I'm skeptical about whether he would actually do so ... I take that statement with a very large grain of salt." The absence of a clear fiscal pledge also troubles Byers, who noted that replacing Canada's Victoria-class submarines with either German or Swedish-built boats would be expensive. So would participation in ballistic missile defence, which has various levels of participation from research and development all the way up to anti-missile radar and batteries. It is, he said, all about the dollars. "I think that when we talk about defence spending and defence budgets, we have to talk about real money going out the door in terms of signed contracts," said Byers. "And neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals have been able to deliver much in the way of signed contracts for the last 20 years." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scheer-rolls-out-an-ambitious-defence-agenda-but-critics-ask-where-s-the-money-1.5127028

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  3 avril 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Canada, NATO allies discuss COVID-19 response in face of world security issues

  OTTAWA — Canada and its NATO allies wrestled Thursday with responding to the COVID-19 crisis while reining in potential new Russian mayhem-making and helping war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan. The discussion unfolded via secure video links — a first in the alliance's seven decades — among the alliance's foreign ministers, including Canada's Francois-Philippe Champagne, as well as NATO's political and military chiefs. They discussed the need to combat “disinformation” as well as providing support to various partners, including the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the European Union, the alliance said in a post-meeting statement. Canada is leading NATO's military training mission in Iraq and has troops in Latvia as part of the deterrence efforts against Russia, which breached Europe's border by annexing part of Ukraine in 2014. Thursday's meeting was also looking at ways to further support the non-NATO countries of Ukraine and Georgia, the alliance said. A senior Canadian official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, said despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada's priority is for the alliance to keep its eyes on the challenges already on its plate before the outbreak. “The COVID-19 pandemic is a test for all of us and highlights the crucial role NATO continues to play,” Champagne said in a statement. The competing challenges were reflected in the declaration NATO released following the morning talks, which were to include Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen. Tod D. Wolters. “Even as we do the absolute maximum to contain and then overcome this challenge, NATO remains active, focused and ready to perform its core tasks: collective defence, crisis management, and co-operative security,” the communique said. David Perry, a defence analyst, said NATO faces some of its own health challenges, among them the fact that the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier is out of commission because of a virus outbreak, while Poland's army chief tested positive last month. “How much of the alliance is actually fighting fit is changing pretty fast, negatively,” said Perry, a Canadian Global Affairs Institute vice-president. “It's improbable other ships or assets aren't already impacted.” The NATO communique said the alliance is airlifting medical supplies around the world, providing people and goods and “vital equipment from military and civilian sources, and harnessing our medical, scientific, and technological knowledge” to deal with the pandemic. “Allies are also working together to ensure public access to transparent, timely, and accurate information, which is critical to overcoming this pandemic and to combating disinformation,” it said. The statement made no direct mention of Russia, but it affirmed that the alliance's “ability to conduct our operations and assure deterrence and defence against all the threats we face is unimpaired.” A day earlier, Stoltenberg said in Brussels that the alliance had made the necessary adjustments to address Russian military manoeuvres close to NATO's borders. Russian planes have flown close to Canadian and American airspace in the Arctic recently, for instance. Karlis Eihenbaums, Latvia's ambassador to Canada, said the pandemic has done nothing to stop the “wars and tensions” NATO was already dealing with. “We can even see that there are some who are using this challenging time to play their cynicism in full and to use this pandemic for their spreading of propaganda and disinformation. In essence, they are playing with people's lives because disinformation can kill,” said Eihenbaums. “We are still receiving report after report of a war going on in Europe, as attacks against Ukraine never stopped.” Andriy Shevchenko, Ukraine's ambassador to Canada, said offers by Russia to send medics and supplies to Italy mask a malevolent intent. He said that amounts to “humanitarian wars, or humanitarian special operations” on Russia's part. The Kremlin has denounced criticism that it is using the crisis for political gain. “Russia has the experience of lying on an industrial scale, and also interfering into other nations' lives with their information tools,” said Shevchenko. “It's something we know so well from our Ukrainian experience, and it's something that Canadians should be concerned about as well.” Thursday's meeting also looked at stepping up the NATO training mission in Iraq and strengthening the alliance's partnerships in the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan, the alliance said in a statement today. The meeting was the first for the alliance's newest member, North Macedonia, which joined last Friday, expanding NATO's ranks to 30 countries. This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 2, 2020. https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news-pmn/canada-nato-allies-discuss-covid-19-response-in-face-of-world-security-issues