The Liberal government appears to have written off a taxpayer loan to the auto industry in March, but is refusing to say how much the loan was for or to provide any other details.
Ottawa has been carrying large, stagnant loans to the auto sector on its books, and repayments have been past due since at least 2010. That was the year that followed a federal bailout of GM and Chrysler that was made in co-ordination with a much larger cash injection by Washington.
The most-recent public valuation of commercial loans that remain in arrears shows a total of $1.15 billion still owed to the federal government as of March 2017.
The secrecy is understandable — they don’t want the embarrassing details of past defaults to cloud future auto sector bailouts.
h/t Rizwan
And when the auto industry abandons Ontario when Trump imposes tariffs on Canadian autos…….. Yeah governments picking private sector winners and losers makes so much sense. I just wonder how many years of taxes the government returned to the auto sector under Harper and his bailout of GM and Chrysler.
Max had a recent bill on accountability on these corporate welfare loans. This might have been part of the reason Scheer ditched him as the auto loans in this portfolio are CPC legacy.
As Lance would say, this is yet another hill not to die on (aka CPC as better managers of LPC policies).
It’s amazing how much power Harper still has, he apparently is responsible for all the bad decisions that the libs are making.
I rather expect that the write-off is money used to bail out the CAW pension funds. Apparently you can’t expect the union to actually pay off it’s obligations.
Since this is apparently happening ‘behind the scenes’, it would be logical to assume that the debt would be used as either a stick or carrot by the Liberals to influence future decisions about keeping factories in Canada.
I can see it now. Trudeau bribing the unions and manufacturers to sign a working agreement, then immediately after the meeting, jumping in front of a camera to publicly backstab them both with unfounded accusations and insults. He’s done exactly that with TWO of the world’s largest markets already, in fact, it is becoming his signature trade move.
I’m going to guess that the genius public servants in charge of the loan let it get stale dated and limitation barred. 6 years with no action? The borrowers don’t have to pay.
Anyone here with the time to file a freedom of information request?
At the time I remember the hyperbole being produced by the opposition that Harper DO SOMETHING to address the financial crisis.
This loan wasn’t something that Harper wanted as much as the opposition demanded during his minority mandate.
If they felt so strongly against the loan why did they not force a nonconfidence motion …. oh yeah they would’ve had to campaign against the bailout then wouldn’t they.
So we can dispense with the its PMSH fault for issuing a loan everybody in the progressive left was demanding he do and stick to this.
Harper didn’t write it off, the liberals just did.
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that’s chump change… check this out…
“Buying Trans Mountain pipeline could
add 36% to the federal deficit. “
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Don’t worry. The budget will balance itself and the deficit will pay itself.
Enjoy!
(the decline.)
I believe the loan was back stopped with shares of GM and Chrysler
No more GM or Chrysler vehicles for me, I can t stop them from getting my tax money that the government helps themselves to, but I can and will stop them from getting any of whats left. Fords, Hondas and Toyotas from now on.
I wonder how much Bombardier owes the federal government. Steve O
Can anyone count that high?