Is the F-35 purchase by Canada illegal?
There's been a lot of controversy lately over the proposed purchase of F-35 fighters by Canada, mainly due to the way the government has been accounting for operating costs (and thus "hiding" $10 billion of the purchase price).
But there's another issue which is more interesting (at least to me) - the purchase might actually be illegal.
In the US, there's a company called UNICOR, also known as Federal Prison Industries or FPI. From the latter name, you might gather that it "provides" jobs to inmates, which it does. This page lists the product lines that UNICOR is involved in, and notes (at the bottom) that for many of these lines, UNICOR is a mandatory supplier - "Federal customers are required to give procurement priority to FPI, when UNICOR is able to provide the desired product, within the required time frame, and at a competitive price." Product lines include aircraft cabling and wiring harnesses, among other items, and one of their other pages notes that their aircraft cable assemblies are incorporated into the F-15 and F-16 fighters, among other aircraft.
So what? Well, it's illegal to import products into Canada that were made with prison labour, although there's an exemption for privately-imported goods for personal use.
So, unless the government is going to claim that it's importing a bunch of fighter jets for "personal use" (in which case, I want one too!), I think it only appropriate that somebody certify that these jets do not contain parts which were manufactured with prison labour.
(Linkage where linkage is due: I twigged to this due to a mostly-unrelated posting over on Randy's blog about IKEA using prison labour in the former East Germany.)
But there's another issue which is more interesting (at least to me) - the purchase might actually be illegal.
In the US, there's a company called UNICOR, also known as Federal Prison Industries or FPI. From the latter name, you might gather that it "provides" jobs to inmates, which it does. This page lists the product lines that UNICOR is involved in, and notes (at the bottom) that for many of these lines, UNICOR is a mandatory supplier - "Federal customers are required to give procurement priority to FPI, when UNICOR is able to provide the desired product, within the required time frame, and at a competitive price." Product lines include aircraft cabling and wiring harnesses, among other items, and one of their other pages notes that their aircraft cable assemblies are incorporated into the F-15 and F-16 fighters, among other aircraft.
So what? Well, it's illegal to import products into Canada that were made with prison labour, although there's an exemption for privately-imported goods for personal use.
So, unless the government is going to claim that it's importing a bunch of fighter jets for "personal use" (in which case, I want one too!), I think it only appropriate that somebody certify that these jets do not contain parts which were manufactured with prison labour.
(Linkage where linkage is due: I twigged to this due to a mostly-unrelated posting over on Randy's blog about IKEA using prison labour in the former East Germany.)