First, delve back into history, to 1986. That year, Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney awarded a 20-year, $100-million contract to service the country’s fleet of CF-18 fighter jets to Quebec-based Canadair — despite Winnipeg’s Bristol Aerospace offering a lower bid. The Mulroney government muttered something about the benefit of Quebec’s “technology transfer” from its well-established aerospace sector, but the truth was far more venal: Mulroney had vowed to sell the separatist Parti Québécois on the benefits of federalism. This contract was the fruit of his vow.
Now consider Bombardier, the pride of Quebec’s vaunted aerospace industry. The company’s choice postal code has resulted in a cash bonanza from the federal as well as Quebec governments. Foisted on the taxpaying public to the tune of $4 billion since 1966, according to the Montreal Economics Institute estimate — an amount that includes provincial government support — Bombardier is one of the biggest recipients of government largesse in the country’s history. Put simply, governments have not allowed Bombardier to fail, despite a chronically anemic share price and a corporate structure that serves to enrich the Beaudoin and Bombardier family clans. The party that oversees Bombardier’s collapse is the party that loses Quebec.
For its part, SNC-Lavalin shares Bombardier’s heft and has the benefit of good timing. With the October election looming on the horizon, a “remediation agreement” would be mutually beneficial to SNC and the Liberal Party of Canada; the former gets out of a legal jam and the latter gets to ride to the defence of a Quebec-based corporate crown jewel. The trouble is, by not granting this remediation, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada seems to have already deemed SNC undeserving of such a thing.
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