Canada is legally committed to 16 F-35s. The other 72 sit in a review that missed its deadline while Saab pitches a Canadian Gripen line.

On August 22, the day Washington’s 50 percent tariff on $27.6 billion in Canadian goods took effect and a day after trade talks broke down, Saab chief executive Micael Johansson told reporters in Sweden that an order of at least 40 Gripen E fighters would justify final assembly in Canada. The assembly would involve about 10 major industrial partners and 250 suppliers.

A month earlier, on July 17, Saab and CAE had signed a memorandum under which CAE would carry out classified mission-systems work in Canada, including software development. Saab says this would keep Canadian and NORAD-related information in the country.

Saab wants a Canadian line for its own reasons as well. The company says it needs a third final-assembly line to meet international demand, so a Canadian plant would also build aircraft for other customers. Johansson has said the outcome rests on a political decision in Ottawa.

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Four public tests would show whether the review has done its work.

The first is an employment concept. The auditor describes Canada’s fighters as on continuous NORAD alert from Cold Lake and Bagotville, with eight other deployment locations. A mixed fleet must say which type stands alert at each base, which deploys to Europe, and which flies from Inuvik and Iqaluit in winter. Those answers set the aircraft, crews, and spares each type needs.

The second is a crew and maintainer plan with numbers, published before the 2030 initial capability date. The RCAF’s January 2026 pilot assurance covered one new type. A second type would take its first instructors from CF-18 squadrons staffed at 70 percent of establishment, just as the first F-35 squadron stands up on interim facilities.

The third is a second-fleet cost on the auditor’s own terms. The auditor recommended that National Defence’s public cost reporting includes every element needed for full operational capability. A second fleet priced that way would carry its own infrastructure, weapons, simulators, and training unit. That cost would be set against the F-35s it displaces and the industrial value Lockheed says Canada would lose below 88 aircraft.

The fourth applies to the jet already flying. National Defence has conceded that the United States controls F-35 software and hardware upgrades. A public account would show what Canada keeps in its own hands if that changes, from spares and mission data to depot work. It would do the same for the Gripen’s engine licence.