The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Canadian procurement is a defence procurement project of the Canadian government to purchase Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), a process started in 1997. The F-35 procurement has been a source of considerable controversy in public policy circles in Canada since the federal government announced its intention to purchase the aircraft in 2010. In April 2012, with the release of a highly critical Auditor General of Canada report on the failures of the government's F-35 program, the procurement was labelled a national "scandal" and "fiasco" by the media. In a December 2014 analysis of the procurement Ottawa Citizen writer Michael Den Tandt cited the Harper government's "ineptitude, piled upon ineptitude, and bureaucracy, and inertia, driving a lack of progress".