By welcoming back the F-35 Demonstration Team, the Toronto Air Show is providing free advertising for Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer. This at the same moment that Lockheed Martin is desperately trying to convince Canada to move ahead with purchasing 88 of its F35 fighter jets, despite a formal government review and huge opposition to Canada paying billions of dollars for these US-made and controlled weapons of war.

What’s more, the devastating use of F-35s in thousands of hours of flights and bombing missions over Gaza during the past nearly 2 years demonstrates precisely what the “most advanced fighter jet” was designed to do – kill civilians by dropping 2000lb bombs that turn schools, hospitals, refugee camps and entire cities to ruins.

UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, highlighted that F-35s have been “integral to equipping Israel with the unprecedented aerial power to drop an estimated 85,000 tons of bombs, much of it unguided, to kill and injure more than 179,411 Palestinians and obliterate Gaza” in her recent report. More recently, the Arms Embargo Now report exposed that Canadian companies manufacture and continue to ship key components for these jets to Israel, making all of us complicit in Israel’s violence and destruction in Palestine.
Whether in Ukraine, Yemen, Palestine, Colombia, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, West Papua, or Ethiopia, Lockheed Martin stands as the greatest profiteer from conflict and violence.

We have been witnessing exactly what the warplanes being celebrated at the Toronto Air Show are designed to do. Despite this, CIAS has brought back the F-35s, enabling the Canadian government to sanitize war and turn the air show into a recruitment drive for the Royal Canadian Air Force and increased military spending by the Canadian Defence Department.