CF-18 Hornet bombing runs highlighted at Abbotsford International Airshow

They've been doing this at the airshow for over ten years now, since Jean Chrétien was in power. You know, that liberal guy who actually sent us into Afghanistan to begin with? So I'm assuming what you really meant to say was, "Welcome to Jean Chrétien's/Paul Martin's/Stephen Harper's Canada."

As for the guy in the crowd, you hear one comment out of 40,000 or so people and somehow that person becomes representive of a nation under Stephen Harpur. As if there wasn't a single person in the entire country who would have ever uttered a comment like that prior to Stephen Harpur coming into power. Sounds like he was paraphrasing "Apocolypse Now" to me. But don't let that stop you from thinking you are somehow fully capable of assessing completely a person's character and belief system (and from that an entire country's character and belief system) based solely on a single comment overheard at an airshow.

Why do we need new ones?

Charlie, I'm dissappointed in you... your comments are derisive and completly out of context. Nobody likes a war but as a country we can't just sit on our hands and do nothing. Some people like to see how our armed forces operate and the airshow is a good opportunity for them to demonstrate what they do for our country. Besides, the air force has the biggest, baddest, fastest most powerful aircraft around. Just the thing these people have paid good money to see. You should stay in a park counting daisies instead of trying to paint the current government as some warmongers just because the hard working men and women in our armed forces give a demonstration at e civilian airshow... sheesh! BTW I like the smell of gun powder too.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Geo-political complexities make it next to impossible for any one outside of the world of international subterfuge to really understand what is happening.
There's one thing we can be absolutely certain of though: that airshows are about the manipulation of the minds of citizenry. Preemptive war and wars of aggression are all about maintaining access to, and creating new sources for massive wealth creation for a very few people, and these very few and incredibly powerful people are full partners with national military, spy agencies, police forces and governments.
I'd say that most people who go to airshows to look at aircraft are not aware of the manipulation, but when a government puts on a war games display in front of them, many of whom are young people, it has to be seen for what it is...softening up the population to make us more willing to fund military adventurism, and to send our children to die to protect the interests of global industrialists.
Good on ya Charlie for helping to bring the conversation into the mainstream.