Targeting Canada - again
As far as the current U.S. administration is concerned there’s nothing like a wall, real or virtual, to make a point about the promise to “Make America Great Again,” even if it means offending an entire nation on its southern border, or banning travellers from a list of Muslim-majority countries.
Or, this past week, virtually declaring a trade war against Canada, its best friend and ally, by putting up a countervailing, or “anti-dumping,” duty on the prospective sale in 2018 of Bombardier’s new C-Series passenger jets to Delta Airlines.
Even the giant U.S. aircraft maker, Boeing, was surprised by the 220 per cent tariff the U.S. Commerce department announced this week. Boeing reportedly would have been happy enough with 80 per cent. After all, that huge U.S. company doesn’t even make 100-passenger jets similar to Bombardier’s C-Series, and, therefore, won’t be materially damaged by the deal the Canadian company has signed with Delta for 75 of the aircraft.
The new, exorbitant tariff is temporary, pending a final decision later this year on its ongoing anti-dumping investigation, the U.S. Commerce department said. But some observers have noted Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross took the unusual step of taking the opportunity to make a strongly worded public statement himself, when the punitive tariff was announced.
“The U.S. values its relationships with Canada, but even our closest allies must play by the rules,” said Secretary Ross, as he highlighted his departments hefty increase in anti-dumping investigations since Donald Trump took presidential office.
“The subsidization of goods by foreign governments is something that the Trump Administration takes very seriously, and we will continue to evaluate and verify the accuracy of this preliminary determination.”
In classic bully style, the U.S. has decided to beat up on Canada and Bombardier to send a tough-trade message to the rest of the world.
It’s also pretty clear what the final outcome of the alleged antidumping investigation will be.
As a result, the future of Bombardier and thousands of jobs in Canada, the U.K, and even 20,000 jobs in the U.S., are in jeopardy.
The unfortunate turn of events this week got me to thinking about the ill-fated history of Canada’s aeronautical/aerospace industry: it can’t seem to catch a break, or, just when things are starting to look promising, the rug gets pulled out.
Coincidentally, earlier this month, members of a Canadian search team managed to find what they believe is one of the long-lost test models of the Arrow lying at the bottom of Lake Ontario.
Beginning in 1953, in the midst of the Cold War, A.V. Roe Canada Ltd. began work on the design of a new fighter/interceptor aircraft to respond to the then-perceived threat of a nuclear bomber attack from the Soviet Union. The company was already making the CF100 jet, the mainstay at the time of Canada’s RCAF. The Arrow was to be the CF-105.
The roll-out of the first Arrow took place on Oct. 4, 1957 before a large crowd of invited guests. It was supposed to be a major media event, but media attention in Canada and around the world was focused that day on the Soviet Union’s launch of the first earth-orbiting satellite, sputnik, by a powerful, ballistic rocket. Suddenly the emphasis was no longer on the threat of manned bombers, and though it took a while, increasingly it began to look like the Arrow might already be obsolete.
On Feb. 20, 1959, known as “black Friday” in Canadian aeronautical history, a newly elected Progressive-Conservative government under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker soon cancelled the Arrow project, even ordering destruction of all plans, equipment and, by that time, several prototypes. The decision led to the immediate loss of 14,000 jobs at A.V Roe, and the company, a subsidiary of Hawker-Siddeley in the U.K., soon shut down. Canada opted to buy less advanced U.S. fighters, and Bomarc anti-aircraft missiles that were useless without nuclear warheads.
The Arrow has been recognized as an aircraft way ahead of its time in design and performance. In its first test flights it flew at close to twice the speed of sound, and by all accounts was a dream to fly.
It’s telling that many of the engineers who worked on the Arrow project became lead engineers, program managers, and heads of engineering in NASA’s manned space programs - Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.[99] The Space Task Group team eventually grew to 32 Avro engineers and technicians, and became emblematic of what many Canadians viewed as a “brain drain” to the United States, according to Wikipedia.
It’s ironic, to say the least, that a big part of what would certainly be regarded as one of America’s greatest achievements was due in large part to Canadian expertise.
I can’t resist mentioning here my own tiny contribution to the NASA shuttle, space program.
In 1978 I was working on commission as a self-employed driver for a Toronto-based courier company when I got a call one day to go to Spar Aerospace in Toronto to pick up a shipment bound for the National Research Centre in Ottawa. It turned out to be part of one of the first prototypes for the Canadarm developed and built by that now-defunct company.
Of course, nowadays that would be considered anything but a secure way to ship what I presume was a top-secret piece of equipment – or should have been - even in my discreet, unmarked cargo van. But the crate was duly loaded and delivered without incident; and I got a nice little pay-day, thank you very much.
I heard this week a corporate successor to Spar Aerospace was moving its operations to the U.S. from Brampton.