Renowned Canadair water bombers are in high demand but can’t be built fast enough as the planet burns

In Europe, Canada’s symbol-of-the-moment is not maple syrup or the Mounties. It’s the Canadair water bomber: Les Canadairs in France; i Canadair in Italy.

In Italy, where I live, they are crowd pleasers. On training runs on the volcanic lakes just outside Rome, the roaring red-and-orange planes can be seen descending sharply over the hill ridges, as if they were Second World War ground-attack aircraft, and skimming the waves as they fill their bellies with more than 6,000 litres of water.

Italy has the biggest European fleet of Canadairs and they have been working flat-out this summer as the drought and savage heat trigger wildfires in Sicily and Calabria and elsewhere. An Italian Canadair doused wildfires in parched Tunisia in July.

Opinion: While Europe burns, Canada’s water bombers are too few and far between

Spain, Greece and France have also pushed their aging Canadair fleets to breaking point. Their governments want more of the unique water tankers with wings, as do other national and regional governments around the world. The orders – signed and impending – flatter De Havilland Aircraft of Canada, the maker of the plane. The bad news is that the demand far outstrips supply. If the water bombers are to keep dominating the global niche they created, the company will need help expanding.

Under Prime Minister Mark Carney, Canada is trying to overhaul its economy to rely less on the U.S. and more on Europe, especially Europe, and Asia. The “pivot,” as it’s called, will be a long process that will require lot of money and deft diplomacy that will exploit global fury over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war.

Part of the formula will see Canada strengthen its domestic economy. Doing so means removing interprovincial trade barriers and promoting winning companies and industrial brands – the ones that can make a splash in foreign markets – at the expense of those that are bound to lose out as Mr. Trump treats Canada as a geo-economic rival that needs to be punished. Ontario’s auto industry comes to mind. Mr. Trump in August said he would raise tariffs on all Canadian cars, car parts and steel to 50 per cent at the start of 2027. No amount of federal or provincial subsidies will guarantee the Canadian auto plants’ success as long as the U.S. market goes dark for them.

The first version of the Canadair water bomber, the piston-engine CL-215, first flew in the late 1960s. Montreal’s Bombardier bought Canadair in 1986 and turned the plane’s successor, the turboprop CL-415, into a commercial success and global airborne brand for Canada. Some 95 were built and fought fires in Greece, Morocco, the U.S., Croatia and Turkey as well as Italy, France and Spain.

Orders dried up in 2015 and Bombardier unloaded the water bomber division. No Canadairs have been delivered to customers since then. In retrospect, shutting production was a mistake, since global warming has turned into a clear and present danger for the planet’s health. Wildfires in the last decade or so have burned millions of hectares in Ontario, the Northwest Territories, California, Russia, Australia, Spain, France, Portugal and several Latin American countries.

De Havilland is owned by Sherry Brydson, a signifcant shareholder of Woodbridge Co. Ltd., owner of The Globe and Mail (she is also a member of International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu’s new Strategic Exports Advisory Council). De Havilland is well aware of the potential of the DHC-515, the upgraded version of the CL-415. It has orders for some 31 of them from various European governments and Canadian provinces. But it estimates global demand at 250-350 aircraft and has been lobbying Ottawa to operate a national water bomber fleet.

More orders are bound to arrive, especially since the shortage of water bombers have become a political issue in Europe. Opposition lawmakers in France and Spain have criticized their governments for not having enough airworthy Canadairs – some are grounded, waiting overhauls – as forests burn.

De Havilland cannot make the planes fast enough. Its first four DHC-515s are under final assembly at its Calgary plant but they won’t be delivered until 2028. Many customers will have to wait until the early 2030s to get theirs, since production will reach only nine to a dozen a year, company executives have said. De Havilland videos show the planes built largely by hand; there seems to be little automation.

If there were ever a case help a Canadian company retain its control of a global market niche and guarantee long-term tech jobs in Canada, this is it. De Havilland is small by Bombardier standards and lacks the latter’s industrial and financial resources. Extra capacity means not only expanding the production sites, but rebuilding the aircraft’s entire supply chain – from landing gear to composite materials – which has been largely idle for more than a decade.

It also means putting in place a team to develop the next-gen water bomber, especially since competition is inevitable. Partly owing to the shortage of Canadairs, a few companies in Europe are devising rival water bombers. The most ambitious appears to be France’s Hynaero, whose Fregate F-100 aircraft looks much like an enlarged DHC-515. Hynaero says it aims to have its first machine flying in 2031. Italian aerospace company 19-01 Holding also has a scooper water bomber in the works.

The federal and Ontario governments have thrown billions of dollars in subsidies at battery plants for electric vehicles. A few bucks for De Havilland to help it preserve its control of one of the few global markets where Canada dominates – water bombers – might be a good idea as Mr. Trump attacks the Canadian economy.