Why does Bombardier ride for free?

Canadian firm the very picture of protectionism

Some 550 Bombardier employees are facing layoffs in thunder Bay, and provincial and federal politicians are eager to blame each other. doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government has thrown the province’s various transit plans into unfunded chaos, the federal liberals allege — not least in toronto, where the province intends to take over the subway and totally redesign a much-needed new line. as the liberals tell it, thanks to Ford nobody knows what’s going to get built and when, and so nobody’s asking Bombardier to build it. the PCS, in turn, accuse the feds of not stepping to the plate to help out with their “historic $28.5 billion transit expansion plan,” which is what they call the aforementioned chaos.

It’s nonsense on both sides: the thunder Bay plant was always going to go idle right around now for lack of orders. to a certain extent, the nonsense is understandable. We’re talking about the largest

(nominally) private-sector employer in one of ontario’s larger cities. a federal election is three months away, and the city’s two liberal seats could conceivably swing back to the ndp.

But beyond that, it’s baffling — like a pantomime from a bygone era.

this is Bombardier we’re talking about. no one blames the company’s rankand-file employees for its most-reviled status, but we are well beyond the point the rank and file should expect anything more than sympathy from Canadian taxpayers — and Gta taxpayers in particular. traditionally, they might have accepted they were overpaying for rolling stock out of a dubious obligation to workers 600 miles and a 15-hour drive away, but at least they got the rolling stock.

In recent years Bombardier has famously forgotten how to fulfil this most basic part of the bargain, and has focused its efforts instead on its real strength: Inhaling government money and enriching senior management.

toronto’s Bombardier streetcar order is a museum of missed deadlines and shoddy workmanship. light rail cars for Waterloo’s new line and prototype vehicles for the Eglinton Crosstown line in toronto have suffered similar delays — even more baffling, as these are essentially off-the-shelf designs in use around the world. the company is banned from bidding on new subway cars for new york City, after a previous batch was both very shoddy and very late. Quebec’s Caisse de dépôt owns one third of Bombardier, for heaven’s sake, and even it gave a $1 billion rolling stock contract for montreal’s new light rail network to snclavalin and alstom. ottawa’s light rail cars are alstom as well. VIA rail’s new cars — VIA rail’s! — are coming from siemens, not from Bombardier.

It must say something about the power of received wisdom in Canadian politics that government ministers still think people want to hear how they’re going to help out poor Bombardier. at this point in the company’s decline they would be crazy even to let the company bid on their historic transit expansion plans, lest they become historic transit debacles.

Ideally, politicians would instead be using the current moment as an opportunity to wean themselves off their Bombardier addiction once and for all — or to go even farther. Buy american policies have never been more reviled, thanks to President donald trump’s embrace of them. yet Canadian jurisdictions still impose local-content minimums on their own infrastructure projects. Bombardier’s too-important-tolose bidding status is a logical result of these policies — and corporate decline is a logical result of that status. there is no good reason competent Canadian companies can’t compete against foreign ones for transit projects both at home and abroad; just as we wouldn’t want them from being prohibited to bid on them abroad, nor should we limit ourselves to those companies here at home.

Ideally, this great unshackling could go well beyond the public transit sphere. Canada’s military procurement record makes the toronto streetcar order look like a thundering triumph, for a very simple and universally understood reason: the primary goal of any shipbuilding contract, for example, is political. British Columbia, Quebec and nova scotia get the work as best befits the needs of the government of the day — all three of them are sharing in more than $1 billion in maintenance contracts, the federal government announced tuesday.

It’s only because we need ships far less than we need streetcars and subway trains that the situation can persist, but the fact remains Canadian taxpayers are vastly overpaying not to get the job done, while ignoring much cheaper and quicker options. this will never be an easy sell — protectionism is an instinct that transcends the Canadian political spectrum. But thanks to Bombardier, it’s easier than ever before. at least it’s good for something.

BOMBARDIER HAS FOCUSED ON ITS REAL STRENGTH: INHALING GOVERNMENT MONEY.