MONTREAL - The prime minister and the Opposition leader did battle Wednesday over Canada's fleet of fighter jets, with Stephen Harper accusing Michael Ignatieff of playing politics with a contract that could boost the country's aerospace industry.

The aircraft support services firm L-3 MAS has landed a $467-million contract extension to maintain the aging fleet of CF-18 jets. The company will service the 77 CF-18s from this year until 2017. The deal includes an option to extend the service contract until 2020, when Harper says the CF-18s will have to be taken out of service.

But it was the next generation F-35 stealth fighter jets that triggered a verbal sparring match between Harper and Ignatieff, over which leader has the smartest plan for Canada's economy.

The F-35s will be acquired in 2016 at a cost of $9 billion for 65 planes. Ottawa estimates that the program could generate $12 billion in economic spinoffs.

"The CF-18 will not go on forever," Harper told reporters at L-3 MAS headquarters in Mirabel, north of Montreal.

"At the end of this decade it will reach the end of its useful life and that's why we will purchase the F-35, which will become the CF-35 for the Canadian forces."

On a visit to Nova Scotia on Wednesday, Ignatieff said the money would be better spent elsewhere.

"He's not responding to the social and economic anxieties about Quebecers, about their jobs, about their retirement and security," Ignatieff told reporters in the town of Baddeck, N.S.

"The priorities of this government are prisons and planes. Is this what Canadians want from their government right now in the middle of a $54-billion deficit?"

Jean Chretien's Liberal government joined the process to develop the F-35 but Ignatieff now says he wants a commons committee to review the deal - something Harper says makes no sense.

"It was the Liberal government that committed Canada in 2002 to the development of this aircraft," said Harper. "The opposition should stop playing political games with this and simply support this which is a necessary purchase for all of us."

Aero Montreal, an umbrella group representing Quebec's aerospace firms, has said the F-35 contract and the CF-18 maintenance deal will create economic spinoffs across Canada for up to 20 years.

"Canadian military procurement programs ... generate significant industrial benefits across Canada and Quebec," said CEO Suzanne Benoit.

"These large contracts help to support innovation and preserve stimulating high value-added jobs."

Quebec is home to 40,000 aerospace workers, about 60% of the Canadian total.

Harper and Ignatieff are both eyeing the province's 75 federal ridings, 49 of which are held by the Bloc Quebecois.