In F-35 reversal, Harper admits he was wrong

Prime Minister Stephen Harper looks at a model of a plane during last year's visit to the Heroux-Devtek plant in Montreal, where he defended the F-35 fighter jet deal.

Thomas Walkom, Opinion, The Toronto Star:

For any government, retreat is embarrassing. For Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, it is near-unthinkable.

So the fact that Ottawa is publicly backtracking on plans to buy 65 state-of-the-art F-35 fighter planes is a sign of how truly bad the original decision must have been.

Harper left it to junior defence minister Julian Fantino to mumble his way through the about-face Tuesday.

It’s never been entirely clear what prompted Canada to choose Lockheed Martin’s unproved and uncosted F-35 as a replacement for its aging fleet of CF-18s.

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