Defense Watch Watch: Good news [also some bad news]

Vice-Admiral Mark Norman has been somewhat vindicated, the fed dropped the lawsuit against him, with the prosecuting attorney saying publicly "we've got nothing". It could be that the Fed thought it'd just be a drag next election, but it's satisfying to see their horseshit fail so abjectly

defense watch has a good summary

Norman of course is now demanding his old job bad just to twist the knife in his former comrades in arms at the DND

Also, Canada and the F-35 have taken a new turn. OK, so remember when the fed took de-facto policy and made it official, that any fighter design had to officially promise that industrial baksheeh? Well it turns out that's not allowed in the framework in which the F-35 was developed, which actually wants F-35 sub-components to be sourced competitively (IE by LockMart, the primary contractor), and explicitly forbids nations from trying to get more baksheeh done in their own nation. While Canada now is BFFs with LockMart, this doesn't seem like a big problem, but Trump of course took this and turned it into an ultimatum, which gives Trudeau a valid pretext for excluding the F-35 as he'll be able to say it was the Americans who took it off the table, not him
Also this seems defense related:

Money Laundering is a Canadian, not BC problem

Let me quote:

It estimated that last year, roughly $46.7 billion was laundered via the Canadian economy, with B.C. responsible for roughly $7.4 billion of that total.

To put that in perspective, 2017 exports for oilseed and grain export in Canada was worth $21.1 billion.  The entire GDP of the province of New Brunswick in the same year was $36.1 billion. 

Here's the spit take:
The report ranks several regions based on their flow of illegal money, placing B.C. in fifth place behind Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
So I had to read the actual report, basically because I wanted to know how Manitoba was somehow outperforming Vancouver in money laundering (to say nothing as to how Ontario is apparently second to anyone simple given how much larger Ontario's economy is.) First, it seems that Alberta is counted as its own province in the estimate, but the other two prairie provinces were considered together, as were all of Atlantic Canada, which makes sense. New Brunswick, for example, is only estimated to be around 1.5% of Canada's GDP, so lumping the smaller provinces together makes sense if you're trying to do a complex estimate. Though you can see how this is a slightly sensationalist take as well, since now there are only six places on that list [BC, Alberta, the Prairies, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces.] So BC is fourth, with Quebec and the Atlantic bringing up the rear. The actual paper in the cited article does a good job at contextualizing the estimates.

The takeaway from it is that money laundering is proportionally similar in the rest of Canada, and that the bubbilicious real estate values in Toronto and Vancouver are significantly effected by money laundering. The report also reports that Vancouver real estate is proportionally among the 'least affordable internationally', which is quite an achievement.

Finally, this made me laugh: so if you wanted a very Canadian headline into fighting money laundering, what would you pick?

"Done with asking nicely" BC opens public inquiry into money laundering