Pop Quiz!

Fill in the blank.

Damn the __________________.

1. torpedoes
2. Americans
3. Harper Government

Canada’s navy wants to spend about $120 million to retrofit torpedoes they bought from the Americans in order to fire them from submarines they bought from the British, according to news reports.

So Canada has four submarines.  One of them is “partially operational” and the other three are not at all operational.  The navy has a total of 36 torpedoes, none of which can be fired from any of the submarines, even the one that is partially operational.  It takes some getting used to.

Apparently once the torpedoes are converted, Canada will need to spend more money to refit the subs.

All this comes to light in the middle of a federal election campaign, but it was the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency that published the information about the pending sale in a press release dated March 23.  Weapons sales of this nature have to be approved by the United States Congress.  Canada is awaiting approval.