After World War II, Canada needed a new interceptor jet that would counter the threat of Soviet bombers. The answer was the Avro Arrow, which developed from 1949, until its controversial cancellation in 1959 ["The Hunt for-]. Today, people are still asking themselves: Was canceling this project a good or bad decision for Canada? The decision made by the Diefenbaker government, to cancel the Avro Arrow project, was proved to be devastating for Canada for three main reasons. First, more than 50,000 people had lost their jobs forcing many of them to immigrate to the US [Hibbert par. 12]. Second, Canada lost a lot of its economical power in the world, and the US gained more. Lastly, canceling the "Arrow" had devastated the Canadian aircraft industry ["Avro Arrow" 173].
After the "Arrow" was cancelled, numerous amounts of people immediately lost their jobs, and many of them helped the US instead of Canada [Goebel par. 35]. On the day of the cancellation, "Black Friday", over 14,000 scientists and engineers immediately lost their jobs ["Avro Arrow" 173]. Eventually, over 50,000 people became unemployed because of the cancellation of the project [Hibbert par. 12]. Many of the fired scientists and engineers had immigrated to the US, and helped put man on the moon. Some even continued to the Concord plane project [Hibbert par. 14]. Canceling the Avro Arrow project caused major unemployment in Canada, and resulted in excellent Canadian brains leaving Canada.
With such high numbers of unemployed people in a short time, Canada, as many people expected, lost a lot of its economic power in the world, and also helped the US to gain some. For Canada, cancellation of the "Arrow" meant that they would be dependant on the US for interceptor jet aircrafts, again ["Avro Arrow" 173]. As mentioned before, many Canadian scientists and engineers immigrated to the US, and helped with huge projects as Americans, rather than as Canadians [Hibbert par.
