Cancelling the Arrow was major mistake. Was the Arrow going to provide monetary dividends from countries buying it? Probably not. Was the nature of war changing and the Arrow wouldn't fit in the new era? Probably. Was the Arrow going to cost a lot of money? Sure.
What the Arrow would have delivered to Canada was it's own expertise and knowledge gained by building the Arrow. Maybe Canada started building it's own jets after a few generation of jets or maybe pivots to building missiles and rockets. As a middle power, building and using rockets is expensive, maybe Canada starts looking reusable rockets far earlier.
The potential possibilities would have a net boon to Canada. Instead we got the classic MBA analysis of a political program. "We're reviewing the program strictly as a monetary cost-benefit analysis. The analysis says that this is not going to benefit to Canada."
This is what most politicians seem to forgot. Investments in political programs take time to bore fruit. Yes, it's going to cost money and budgets will be overrun. However, the chance to build homegrown expertise and knowledge is far to valuable.
