A few posts back (here), I made a suggestion that government could do better to support the economy, including innovation by investing for its own selfish needs rather than by tinkering around the edges with tax incentives, loans, and other assorted forms of public largess. I have to admit, this is one of the examples I trot out to make my point about downstream, broader economic and social up- and down-drafts resulting from government doing what it needs to do for itself (i.e., for its citizens) rather than pretending to be venture capital. I just didn’t expect the example so soon.
Whether the group, which includes, Maj-Gen. Lewis McKenzie will succeed in bringing back to life the Avro Arrow remains to be seen. More significantly, I supposed, even if it does whether the value would be the same as in the 1960s is another question. As noted in this article, Will legendary Avro make a Lazarus-like return, a group of people would like to address the DND’s need for fighter jets not with the foreign F-35 but with a Canadian Arrow (offspring). If it’s just an assembly of foreign technologies and parts, that’s a good start. If it’s reconstitution of still-valuable (hmmm…) Canadian technologies and a runway (pardon the pun) for the Canadian manufacturer–Avro?– to reinitiate advanced technology development and manufacture not only for the Canadian government but to compete around the world, that’s a whole other thing. AND, not to put too fine a point on it, if that path leads other Canadian businesses to develop (consumer) products on the back of such infrastructure and capabilities that are created for this (and ongoing) contracts, that’s a virtuous circle.
What else can I say?
Of course, it could be a pipe dream that for good or bad reasons ends as it did in the 1960s… so that the American aviation and defense contractors remain unchallenged here.
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