RCMP Black Hawk border patrol bill topping $50M
· Toronto Sun
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OTTAWA — It seems to have caught some bureaucratic turbulence along with would-be border jumpers.
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The RCMP’s program to lease a trio of Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to patrol the Canada-U.S. border has passed $50 million, even as one of the military choppers sits grounded due to missing Transport Canada regulatory permits.
As reported this week in the Globe and Mail, the national police force between January 2025 and the end of May 2026 paid $43.79 million to a private firm to lease the three Black Hawks — chartered to augment a fleet of nine helicopters already used by RCMP border patrols.
An additional $7.5 million is budgeted to keep the program in the air through November.
Missing permit grounds third chopper
RCMP spokesperson Paul Northcott told the newspaper there’s no timeline for when the third helicopter — grounded due to a lack of airworthiness paperwork from Transport Canada — will be granted regulatory permission to fly.
“The third aircraft was voluntarily grounded following concerns raised by Transport Canada related to potential regulatory considerations,” he said.
The RCMP says the company, identified as Helicopter Transport Services located in Carp, Ont. just outside of Ottawa, isn’t charging them to charter the grounded chopper.
The decision to charter the three Black Hawks came in 2025 as part of Ottawa’s scramble to bolster Canada’s border security in the wake of tariff threats by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Introduced in 1979, UH-60 Black Hawks are reliable and resilient helicopters flown by dozens of militaries around the world, including the United States, Australia, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Brazil.
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