Canadian Official Opposition interim leader Rona Ambrose came out swinging yesterday in the daily Parliamentary Question Period, demanding to know why Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to disavow his part of a deal to prop-up Bombardier aircraft with almost $1.5 billion in taxpayer funds — even as the company announced pay raises for its executives.
A corporate strategy that seeks government subsidies while laying-off regular employees and paying-off company elite goes way beyond bad optics, notes the interim Conservative leader, who said in the House of Commons Monday, “This is not helping the middle class. This is lining the pockets of the one percent of the one percent with tax dollars.”
Conservative leadership candidate and Quebec Member of Parliament Maxime Bernier told The Daily Caller on Monday, “I don’t care how much corporations pay their employees as long as it’s not with taxpayer money. All this corporate welfare must end. I will abolish it once elected prime minister of this country.”
The revelation that the chronically government-subsidized company would be rewarding its executives with lucrative salary hikes set off protests in Montreal, where its aircraft production facilities are located. Bombardier subsequently announced it would delay implementing its compensation for executives who many now joke are being rewarded for their ability to secure government loans and grants.
Even Trudeau backed down from his usual congratulatory tone whenever he talks about Bombardier, allowing that the Liberal government was “obviously not pleased” with the company’s spendthrift ways “but we are happy to see it make decisions that are fixing that for Quebecers’s and Canadians’s confidence.”
Bombardier plans to liquidate almost 15,000 jobs in its global operations by the end of 2018 — tough medicine it says it needs to take if it is to reverse its current state of encroaching financial collapse. Taxpayers are also assisting — to the tune of nearly $1.5 billion in federal and provincial “loans” that might never be repaid.
Last week, inexplicably to most observers, the company publicly announced that it would be increasing the salaries of its top executives by 50 percent.
That fanned the flames of rage that was already simmering over the latest bail-out package to Bombardier, a company that routinely seeks government assistance to offset disappointing sales.
Bombardier’s chief executive officer, Alain Bellemare, admitted the executive pay raises were ill-advised and suggested the company is now listening to the public.
But Conservative critics say Trudeau can’t hear a note of protest.
“We have seen anger expressed by voters in both the United States and in Canada about how out of touch elites are,” Conservative leadership candidate Michael Chong wrote in an email to supporters.
“The Bombardier example is one reason why this anger is out there. And citizens and taxpayers have every right to be upset.”