Canadian Water Bomber Plant Has A Two-Year Backlog, Which Is Also How Long The Fires Plan To Burn
The De Havilland facility building the Canadair water bomber is reportedly overwhelmed with international orders, which is the most Canadian success story imaginable: we have become the world's leading supplier of a machine whose entire purpose is admitting things have gone badly.
The scoop-and-drop aircraft can pull 6,000 litres out of a lake in twelve seconds, a statistic Canadians now recite the way other countries recite GDP figures. Greece wants them. Spain wants them. France wants them. Everyone wants them, and the queue is long enough that a country ordering today should probably plan its 2029 fire season around a strongly worded press release instead.
There is a dark comedy in the industrial policy here. For decades Ottawa searched for a manufacturing sector Canada could dominate, holding summits, funding studies, commissioning reports with the word "corridor" in the title. The answer turned out to be a niche aircraft that only makes sense in a world that is on fire, and the world has been extremely accommodating.
The assembly line is in Calgary. The fires are in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, which is to say the customer base has excellent local representation. Homeowners in B.C. are meanwhile learning that their insurance policies contain a section titled "Wildfire" that mostly explains what is not covered.
Economists call this a competitive advantage. The proper term is a hedge. Canada has arranged its economy so that if the summers keep getting worse, at least the order book gets better.
We are not exporting a plane. We are exporting a receipt.