A ceremony in Texas
On Feb. 2, 2026, RCAF Lt.-Gen. Jamie Speiser-Blanchet travelled to Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth, Texas facility for a ceremony marking a production milestone for Canada's first F-35, where she signed the fuselage bulkhead. The Ottawa Citizen requested a photo of the signing that same day. DND spokesperson Kened Sadiku later confirmed the Fort Worth event was a closed-door ceremony, but gave no explanation for withholding the image itself.
Lockheed Martin, for its part, said it wasn't the one holding things up. Company spokesperson Amanda Hauck said in an email that "the Media Relations Office at the Department of National Defence is co-ordinating directly with RCAF public affairs for any queries regarding this imagery," pointing the request back to Ottawa.
Why the photo mattered
Government sources told the Citizen the delay wasn't accidental. The concern, they said, was that a ceremony photo showing a senior RCAF officer signing off on the jet would undercut Carney's public message that Canada's F-35 purchase was still under review. The RCAF has recommended Carney proceed with the full order of 88 F-35s, but the federal government has said it's only committed to buying 16 so far. A photo of the RCAF's own commander celebrating a production milestone for the plane risked making that review look like a formality.
Months of "looking into it"
After the Citizen's Feb. 2 request, the military spent the next month telling the paper it was still "looking into" the matter. It wasn't until May 13, more than three months after the request, that DND finally released anything at all, and even then it wasn't the photo. Instead, the department handed over a grainy black-and-white photocopy of the image rather than a high-resolution colour version. DND official Shannon Clark Larkin described it as the copy of processed information that could be located using the department's best efforts.
Defence Minister David McGuinty's office did not respond to the Citizen's request for comment on why the photo was withheld in the first place.
What ottown has covered
This isn't the first time the RCAF's public messaging has drawn scrutiny in Ottawa this year. In August, ottown's earlier report looked at questions swirling over who actually requested a July RCAF flypast over downtown Ottawa, another episode where the air force's public relations decisions came under the microscope.
With McGuinty's office staying silent and DND declining to release the records that would explain the delay, it remains unclear when, or whether, Ottawans will see the full-colour photo of the ceremony that started this all.
Sources: Ottawa Citizen (Defence Watch, via Yahoo News Canada syndication)
