Canadian Feds Discuss GM Bailout
Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty awakes!. After years of ignoring calls from Ontario's Premier Dalton McGuinty to subsidize Ontarian jobs, brushing off accusations of inaction vis-à-vis the steady outflow of Ontario's manufacturing jobs to lower-cost areas, Flaherty could hold back no longer. Call it a Shakespearean twist of fate, but of all of the 308 electoral districts in Canada, Flaherty has the misfortune of representing the federal electoral district of Whitby-Oshawa, right where GM Canada lives– the epicentre of Ontario's ailing manufacturing. Flaherty opened the newsday by announcing a $250m bailout of GM Canada. Except he didn`t call it a bailout. CBC reports the Flaherty will make money– set aside under an "environmental investment fund"– available to GM to help it pursue green technology. The move, another possible knee-jerk reaction to the closure of GM-Oshawa, has caught even Dalton McGuinty by surprise. (Dalton hasn`t decided whether to be pleasantly surprised or to, in typical provincial fashion, say it is not enough. Though the conditions of the deal aren't finalized,) Flaherty hinted heavily that the money should be used to replace truck production by smaller car production. Well duh.
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"I’d rather see the feds place a $250 million ORDER for hybrid trucks built in that facility. They could then create a lottery with the trucks as prizes or put them into service in the public sector" If we divide by a 50,000 per truck, then we can buy 5,000 trucks or cars. If our wage is much higher than Mexico how long can we keep buying jobs? When they offer them $2.50 per hr. And we're more than 10 times than Mexicans make on the assembly line. No different than goods in Wal Mart, no local manufacturer can compete with them at all.
Ha ha. Take money from working citizens by force, and transfer it to corporations run by multi-millionaires. I thought tax money was supposed to be used to run the government, and that's why people put up with it. Now it's supposed to be given freely to businesses. Sort of reverse robin hood.
corporate welfare.
for those not in the 'know' about the oshawa - whitby riding: i don't think that Jim Flarhety needs any bribes to win his seat in any election... as for GM Oshawa in general: it's true that their car and truck plants are at/near the top of GM north america in terms of efficiency... i wouldn't be too surprised to see another product move into the truck plant, or to actually see the truck plant keep producing trucks...