CanadaPolitics

Yeah, let's invest in a small number of expensive as hell fighter jets. They've worked really well in recent conflicts against drones /s.

May as well be debating whether to buy swords or cannon balls.

Build up our biotech industry, and our drone industry. Biotech to help with vaccines and research during peacetime (especially with the US pulling back), other tasks during conflicts, with delivery via drone. Use the money to build a series of hardened drone manufacturing sites, underground to avoid bombing where possible, for larger scale higher quality drone production. They'd likely also provide a boost to locals, providing things like more optimized delivery for remote communities. They're also far more useful for things like humanitarian missions supporting people during times like natural disasters -- more versatile, and way cheaper per unit, and proven to be pretty damn effective in recent conflicts in general.

There's also the humanoid robots / robots in general. That's effectively fixing to become a nearly instantly deployable, versatile task handling (and doing so without question/human hesitation for genocides), global force -- one who's size is only limited by manufacturing capacity. Which Canada currently has zero manufacturing capacity, as far as I know.

I imagine our continued focus on super expensive, small quantity jets is just sunk costs and a military set in its traditions.