This article is about the F-18 Super Hornet, which Boeing manufactures. However I think it's interesting to note that the F-18 and F-15 were both designed by McDonnell Douglas. The last time Boeing designed a successful fighter jet on their own was <i>never</i>.
Boeing went dirty against Canada’s bombardier big time with the c-series regional jet which they did everything possible to block them out until they ran our of cash and basically gave the complete project to airbus in exchange to save the jobs (this is an oversimplification but the general idea). Going with boeing wouldn’t have fared very well with a lot of canadians.
There is some confusion in the comments here.<p>Before today, the planes remaining were:<p>F-18 - unit cost is somewhere around $70m<p>F-35 - unit cost is somewhere around $80m<p>Gripen - unit cost is somewhere around $85m<p>The plane rejected with this announcement is the first one, the F-18.<p>These are made by Boeing, Lockmart, and Saab respectively. This is Canada rejecting the oldest and cheapest plane of the three remaining.<p>I think some people are commenting here by just stating what they want to be true, rather than looking at what's actually happening.<p>Personally I'd rather the whole thing be scrubbed and they spend the $19b on something else. But for now, it looks like they're going to either spend billions on F-35s, or even more expensive Saab Gripens (unless they go with a very old model cheaper Gripen, but I dunno if that'll happen).
Canada's fighter procurement saga is a fascinating tale of arbitrary and spiteful requirement definition. The initial pledge not to purchase the F-35 was basically a signalling of anti-Americanism, and a way to differentiate the Liberals from their Conservative predecessors, by saying the F-35 was 'the wrong airplane'. Then the Liberals got mad at Boeing over their dispute from Bombardier, so the F-18E/F were 'wrong' too.<p>As far as I can tell, nobody has actually defined what they want to see or get out of a Canadian fighter, and there isn't a broad vision for the Canadian armed forces either.