TC's recall...
I am afraid TC has his timings wrong.
When the 101 order for Canada was cancelled in 1993 there weren't any in service anywhere in the world, just the 9 PP prototypes. The RN had the first declared IOC for any service and that was in 1998 so until that time no availability data existed. The maturity proving programme only started in summer 1998.
In 1993 the aircraft was still in development (Type Certification was 1994, first prod aircraft flew in late 1995) so any decision to cancel a contract could only have been made on;
1) Technical reasons such as that that the aircraft didn't meet the spec (never to the best of my knowledge stated as the reason)
2) Budgetry reasons ('we can't afford them', which would be at least be a credible reason and may have been the motivation for Chretians attitude to the aircraft)
3) Poltically motivated reasons (which seems to be the actual case for Chretians decision as it was one of his stated pre election policies, possibly based on 2) above).
The cost of penalty payments cannot be placed at the door of a supplier who was working to a fully signed and legally binding contract that they weren't in breach of. The Canadian Govt HAD to pay the penalty clauses because they cancelled the contract without due cause, I am sure that if there had been due cause the DND would have used it to avoid the payments.
The debacle over this procurement is entirely the Canadian Govts fault. By now, the aircraft as originally ordered would be like the RN aircraft and have been proven a mature type would be entering an upgrade programme to 'the latest technology'. Instead the poor line pilots are flying ancient aircraft with realistically NO firm timescales for anything like the similar capability being available, let alone 'the latest technology' promised by a supplier who has consistently managed to fail to meet every milestone set for it.
Monty Python could have written this script!
DM