Canada's budget watchdog says it appears the Conservative government kept two sets of books when it came to the costs of replacing Canada's aging fleet of CF-18s with 65 F-35 stealth fighter jets.
In an interview airing on CBC Radio's The House on Saturday, parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page spoke out on the issue for the first time since Auditor General Michael Ferguson delivered a report earlier this month lambasting the government and Department of National Defence officials over estimated costs of replacing Canada's fighter jets.
Page told host Evan Solomon what bothered his office was that one set of books was available inside DND, while another "for communication purposes" was presented publicly, in which he said the government was "low-balling" the numbers.
"You do get the sense there were different books being kept," he told Solomon.
In his report, Ferguson found that the costs of acquiring 65 F-35s over 20 years was closer to $25-billion, and not the $15-billion the public had been told.
Ferguson's findings supported Page's estimates of $29-billion over 30 years tabled by the spending watchdog in March 2011, a figure for which Page was heavily criticised at the time.
When asked by Solomon whether he felt vindicated by the auditor general's findings, Page answered that his office "didn't do any victory laps."
"We are doing our jobs," said Page, who was appointed by Stephen Harper in 2008 to a four-year term, which ends next year.
READ MORE: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/f-35-purchase-had-2-sets-of-books-page-says-1.1137337
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