Harjit Sajjan’s latest defence purchase of C6 machine guns has become a disaster.
More than 340 C6 machine guns have been deemed defective and must be returned to manufacturer Colt Canada for repairs, according to military sources.
The problems affect the gun’s gas regulator system, and there is also an additional problem with the barrel nut.
This comes as Sajjan remains on the back foot following a botched Afghanistan mission and rampant sexual misconduct within his upper ranks.
Sajjan announced that Canada would buy 1,148 C6A1 FLEX machine guns in July 2017, and another contract in January 2020 buying an additional batch. These contracts together are worth over $130 million.
Colt Canada did not respond for comment when asked why the machine guns were defective, but parent company Ceska Zbrojovka said they were “working with the government to address any technical issues,” according to the Windsor Star.
This only continues a long line of military procurement mistakes and screw-ups that Canada has become famous for.
According to a 2019 report by the MacDonald Laurier Institute, Canada has “the worst military procurement system in the western world” with most famously, the Canadian Surface Combatant program’s cost ballooning from $14 to nearly $30 billion dollars.
The Trudeau government has no interest in fixing these issues or putting in any accountability mechanisms for defence procurement. Our men and women in uniform simply deserve better, but this government will not provide it. Instead, our soldiers continue to use nearly 60-year-old pistols, broken machine guns, and other obsolete and out-of-date equipment.
When watching training videos of Canadian soldiers in 2021 and comparing them to the Australian military, it looks like Canada’s military is stuck in 2005.
Comparatively, the Australians have done an incredibly good job when it comes to defence procurement, and they even recently pledged to manufacture missiles in their own country in case the Americans couldn’t deliver them in times of crisis.
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged to “create our own sovereign capability on Australian soil is essential to keep Australians safe, while also providing thousands of local jobs in businesses right across the defence supply chain.” This thinking is simply lacking in Canada, where we just assume the United States will always protect us.
