John Eacott,
I do not recall those Canadians complaining about short spares, they complained about too much maintenance, about 3 times more than the promises made by Agusta.
Also, the time accumulated by the whole fleet is very low, I happened to list the statements from the sales guys as they tallied up the flight time while bragging about the "experience" of the fleet, and noted that they were building up about 1200 hours per month for the whole fleet. This was over a 2 year period, and each statement as it grew from 30,000 to 55,000 was about 1200 hours per month. If they have 90 aircraft, that is about 14 hours per month per aircraft.
A normal military helicopter gets about 50 hours per month, so I would guess the "experience" they have is "bad" experience. Like the three times higher maintenance, they are building time at 1/3 the rate of the typical aircraft.
Didn't a Canadian person die when the hoist failed during a rescue and they left him out there? That wasn't caused by short spares.
I think it is plain old parts failure that makes it a dog, and the spares shortage is a way to hide the problem while they try to lure in more suckers.