OTTAWA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) expressed disappointment to today’s federal announcement of (another) corporate welfare handout to Bombardier.
“This government started out with some encouraging talk about ‘value for taxpayers,’ but it’s now the same old approach of giving big taxpayer subsidies to powerful corporate interests,” said CTF Federal Director Aaron Wudrick. “The only silver lining is that Bombardier only got a fraction of the $1.3 billion they’d been begging for.”
Bombardier has been a perennial recipient of corporate welfare, having received more than $3.8 billion in taxpayer handouts since 1966.
Wudrick noted the CTF has been the leading national voice in Canada opposing giving Bombardier more corporate welfare. The CTF takes some pride in knowing that its advocacy contributed to delaying this bailout by over a year and making it significantly smaller than was expected.
“We’re frankly a bit proud that we were able to push the government into reducing the bailout. Saving taxpayers $900 million is no small feat. But it’s also ridiculously stupid to give a single dime of taxpayers’ money to this company that has said they don’t even need it,” continued Wudrick. “These types of subsidies have absolutely nothing to do with sound economic or business decisions and everything to do with cynical political pandering.”
The CTF launched its campaign opposing a bailout to Bombardier in 2015 with English-language radio ads, French-language radio ads, a satirical attempt to raise funds for the company and ‘celebrated’ the one-year Begaversary in late 2016.
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