[terryjsmith]

Well Porter as an airline is likely making a big bet on this for their downtown airport in Toronto so there is definitely a use-case there. I'm not sure if this is a contingency plan on their campaign to get the runway extended and noise by-laws lifted, but it sure seems like they're hedging their bets on this.

* Written from the downtown Toronto airport lounge.

[fidotron]

Yes, as they rightly observe the plane does have uses, but if it really had enough, with potential customers to prove it, then they would have been able to get the development cash on the open market.

Gambling with other people's money is a lot easier than doing it with your own.

[afreak]

Speaking as a Canadian, I personally would rather funnel money into projects that keep Canadians employed. There is a rather difficult problem with competing against other larger nations in the west (especially our friendly neighbour) who too have large tax subsidies and grants.

Canada exports most of its oil refinery to the United States so it can double dip on taxes. It as a result employs Americans in the refineries. Should we stop subsidizing American jobs then?

[fidotron]

The point is the government doesn't know where to best spend the money. Quite why it has so much to spend is the other question, especially in Quebec where there are other rather pressing needs.

I don't think many Canadians realise just how many non-Canadian workers they are subsidising as a result of all of this. There is the official logic of training locals in skills that get imported alongside government incentives, however, what seems to happen is you get a mobile group of people that just follow the incentives around from province to province.

One thing Bombardier do have in their favour is they are a local entity and the taxes on any profits do return to the system, so I can't fault them on that.

[afreak]

Most Canadians are aware of how Bombardier gets a large amounts of subsidiaries. Subsidisation is a large part of the Canadian economy so if you were to ask any alert person here if Bombardier was getting subsidised, it would range from "probably" to "yes".

I am not sure why you're angry unless you're Canadian yourself then I guess you're justified.

[fidotron]

Subsidisation is a large part of the Canadian economy, primarily in provinces where the economy is a disaster area. They're not disaster areas that will be fixed by subsidisation; they're maintained and made worse by market distortions of this kind.

I'm angry because Canada would be far better off as a whole without this, and the parasitic bureaucracy that sucks the life out of the non-subsidised parts of the system.

[teamonkey]

> I don't think many Canadians realise just how many non-Canadian workers they are subsidising as a result of all of this.

The non-Canadian workers are still paying Canadian taxes - Quebec taxes, even. Quebec's government wants its population to grow fast, especially so when they're high-earners. The investment absolutely makes sense from that respect.