All the signs point to Ottawa buying fewer than half the number of F-35s it said it would, and Carney's speech in Davos explains why

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The petulance displayed by the U.S. ambassador to Canada is exactly what you might expect from Pete Hoekstra if he had just been informed that Canada intends to spend half the money earmarked for new F-35 fighter jets on the rival Swedish Gripen.

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Hoekstra apparently skipped the class on diplomacy being about saying the nastiest thing in the nicest way. Instead, he threatened that there would be consequences for the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), if Canada did not buy 88 F-35A fighter jets, as the Trudeau government said it would in December 2022 (after initially cancelling the project in 2015).

NORAD would have to be altered and the U.S. would have to fly more F-35s in Canadian airspace, the ambassador told the CBC this week.

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