F-35 firms breathe sigh of relief at Tory majority

Political stability brings smiles to aerospace sector.

Published May 11, 2011

Bill Matthews is pleased as punch that the Conservatives won a majority government. Even over the phone, the sense of relief in his voice is palpable.

"We're meeting with our major customers in the next few days and weeks, and I think what we have to report from a political point of view in Canada is pretty positive," said the vice-president of marketing at Magellan Aerospace Corporation.

Mr....

Story Comments (7)

03/18/12 at 01:03 am

Well said Bob. If there's one thing I would like to see an initiative like this acmpcolish, its to get people thinking and perhaps even one day, have them start asking questions that will force candidates to change their visionary approach.Thanks to the incredible publishing platform that social media brings to the table, initiatives like this can actually reach quite a number of relevant people. It's no news to many of us that have either worked in government or have government as a client (as in my case) that PROCESS is valued more than OUTCOME. Clearly, it should be the other way around. That being said as you allude to, transparency demands a focus on PROCESS, which takes away from measuring the OUTCOMES. A bit of a catch-22, unless you believe that both can be acmpcolished effectively at the same time

03/16/12 at 01:03 pm

Thanks for spotlighting an apnortimt ethical concept in transparency.Trouble with number 2 is it sounds like a dead ringer for bureaucratic authorship. Campaigns never trade on measurables, nor should they. This is administrative jargon, not political. Rather, the quintessential campaigners in the likes of Obama, King, the Kennedy's, Churchill always aim to inspire through expansive visions, alluring, if amorphous dreams, and the Garden sentiments, not yardsticks. I think the current usage of the word transparency is rather superficial, predictably confused with visibility . Transparency, meaning to see through is about puncturing the visible to get through to the layers of processes, motives, ideologies, analysis, options, pathways, alternatives which ultimately produce the final outcome, the visible residue. Transparency doesn't command, Show us what you're doing! . Rather, it says, Let's see THROUGH YOU, into your thinking, your motives, your attitudes, all that which drives you to do what you're doing. A good example would be show and tell all the processes (including pitfalls), all the ideas retained (and discarded) which went into policy DEVELOPMENT, not the visible policy itself. Transparency permits us to see the dead ends as well as the advances. Transparency permits us to see the FIRST draft of a policy, with all its warts, not just the final polished one.This is idealistic, of course. Ideal transparency would be self-defeating in the current environment of media schools of sharks for whom faults signal bloodbaths to devour in news frenzies. There is little media or public tolerance for error or exploration or lateral thinking which may go nowhere. Full transparency, by definition, must not throw up any filters which exclude seeing our frail mortality, our self-defeating hubris, our tragic missteps, indeed our humanity. That's the transparency, we're asking to see in King Lear, Hamlet, and/or Othello. A bold thesis might venture, Transparency is human affairs is just a synonym for tragedy! Or, how about, The manifest principle which exposes every political scandal is fully realized transparency. Thanks for provoking thought. The whole idea, right!ha!bob

F-35 firms breathe sigh of relief at Tory majority

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