Bombardier

Question: If someone made $62,000 last year, had $187,000 in their bank account, and yet sought a $5,360 subsidy from government, what would the common sense response be?

Back in late 2011 after the Occupy Wall Street protests, Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne gave a speech in Toronto to decry what he called “the most inane displays of greed.” The reference was to behaviour he had observed while serving on various company boards over the years.

In the land of government plenty—that vast landscape populated with the tax dollars of Canadians—there is no shortage of politicians willing to hand out and defend subsidies to business and no dearth of corporations willing to take the cash.

In his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell argued that, “political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” Orwell’s quip came to mind again recently after reading Bombardier’s defence of taxpayer subsidies to business, this in response to my recent study on the matter.