We call this confirmation bias.

The Saab is likely cheaper to operate as it's a smaller plane and Canada only has to patrol its northern border.

Also for Canada ordering from America is like France ordering tanks from Germany in 1936.

Worth noting that the base plane for one of the US-based contenders, the Aeris X by L3Harris, would also be the same Bombardier Global 6500 business jet.

Or, consider that the smaller Saab better fits the mission profile for Canada, and may be cheaper to operate, all the while The Guardian is furiously beating off trying to turn this into a bigger story than it really is.

Canada has many issues. First and foremost, their entire economy is basically 3 mineral extraction industries stacked on top of each other in a trench coat.

They are also (unfortunate?) to share a border with USA and be party to NAFTA. This makes it trivial for educated, professional Canadians to work in the US on a TN visa indefinitely. We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. But it's actually every industry since US firms pay 2-3x more than equivalent Canadian firms.

The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. And Canada itself got none of the benefits of that workforce in between.

I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN visas to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.

These are extremely expensive programs that the Swedes have historically been willing to pay to maintain as much neutrality as possible in their defence procurement system. A Saab Gripen has almost the same flyway cost as an F-35 because of manufacturing scale differences (maintenance is far cheaper, though) and the Gripen is far less capable (it is one of the best western fighters if a full blown war happens and your bases are all destroyed, though). Sweden had unique defence requirements due to this that wasn't being met by others.

Sweden was forced to take their defence seriously due to their geography and political will. Canada has had an easy ride and when the going got expensive, we cancelled our domestic programs (most famously the arrow, but also a lot of other stuff).

Sweden does not have a car industry. The fighter jets are a different matter, very strong technical moat and need to prove the system in combat. You can't just start a fighter jet business.

Not that it invalidate your point, but Sweden has 1/4 the population of Canada, not 1/10.

Because Canada has been poorly managed for a long time by all political parties that have been voted in.

There are trade offs in all things. Trying to do everything yourself does also have a cost. It is not neccesarily better.

We have a larger partner speaking the same language and with a largely synonymous culture and a heavily integrated economy as our neighbour. The moment a Canadian company sees success -- in optics, autos, science, medicine, weaponry, etc. -- it is absorbed by a larger US company and suddenly is no longer Canadian, and in many cases any Canadian operations will usually get choked out.

There are few examples where this isn't the outcome.

This has happened across Canada for well over a century, across every sphere. And in the process the Canadian input is retconned out of existence and Americans ponder why Canada "doesn't make anything".

Sweden had nothing like this, and they punch way above their weight class because of this. Though that has been changing, for instance with a Chinese company buying Volvo, etc.

The only protection against this is...protectionism, whether explicit controls or implicitly by ownership or funding structures. Canada became a leader in nuclear tech by the nuclear industry basically being government owned. It became a transportation powerhouse by a government owned railway. And so on.

Change is afoot. Carney has made significant efforts to stop just sending hundreds of billions to the US and most military procurement will focus on Canadian products and innovation. Which leads to lots of gnashing and screaming by propaganda rags like the US-owned PostMedia.

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