Is all this speculation a case of 'might be', 'maybe' or 'possibly'?
My understanding in simplistic terms is that the Canadians did hold an open competition so other political parties and so on want a 'do over'.
Personally I think the result will be if they do bin the purchase and have a 'proper' competition that Canada won't be getting any fighter jets for a long time. Because the Canadian military will tip up with a myriad list of requirements that the aircraft will have to fulfil to even get down selected thus lots of manufacturers will have to present what ever aircraft they have now with the bid team having to work really hard to prove that the 'roadmap' will result in aircraft that meets the militarys spec.
Then the buy will be so small relatively speaking for what has become a custom aircraft as they have to replace lots of now obsolecent parts with the additional testing and integration thats comes with that. then the capability will have to be salami sliced to produce an aircraft that's still years late and less than promised.
In other words repeating exactly whats happened with the F35 but with less planes, manufacturing scale, yet more wasted money and delay all while the exsiting aircraft start to crap out effecting your military capability (all of which applies to the F35, but all you really end up doing is extending the problem).
Then of course your support and sparing policy becomes a huge issue as the total fleet is pretty small parts and support is expensive so you start to canabalise your existing stock of aircraft. It's like you take all the crap parts of F35 and do them again but in new crappier ways, all because some bright spark assumes that because the unit cost of an older fighter thats been bought in the thousands will marry up to the cost of an aircraft that ends up being a custom job in a much smaller buy.
Or standard military procurement of a fast jet
