The Griffon upgrade has a contract number. The public registry still returns zero.

W8475-205391/001/BF — nearly eight hundred million dollars on CanadaBuys and the Defence Capabilities Blueprint. Search the same number on open.canada’s contracts portal and you get nothing.

The Royal Canadian Air Force’s CH-146 Griffon Limited Life Extension is not a rumour. Public Services and Procurement Canada announced a nearly $800-million award to Bell Textron Canada Limited on 30 May 2022. The Defence Capabilities Blueprint names the implementation instrument: W8475-205391/001/BF. CanadaBuys lists the value as CAD 797,556,147.

What is missing is the ordinary accountability trail. A search of the open.canada contracts portal for that contract number returned zero records on 11 July 2026. Paid-to-date is not in the public freezes. The official DND project page still reads like a 2020 definition schedule — Phase 3, full operational capability 2027 — while the blueprint already describes implementation as in progress and frames the life extension as a bridge to a Next Tactical Aviation Capability Set.

In late June 2026, reporting said the work was paused for cost, schedule, complexity, and replacement-fleet planning. That pause remains reporting-class until a stop-work instrument is public. The deeper pattern is older: a named multi-hundred-million-dollar instrument that the award channels publish and the proactive disclosure search does not surface.

Every figure above is linked in the sources. Open them. Check the number yourself.