The hapless Quebec company Bombardier will lay off 7,000 positions over two years in its rail division despite being two years behind in the delivery of streetcars to the City of Toronto. The scandalous incompetency of the Mexican subsidiary has seen a handful of slipshod vehicles delivered, many of them entirely out of alignment and unusable by the TTC. City Council is deciding whether to sue the company. It is an appalling example of the folly — in this case — of buying Canadian. That is how Bombardier got the contract. There seems very little chance that it would have received Toronto’s trolley business if it were not an old Canadian company. On the same day this was announced, the floundering firm said it has a letter of intent from Air Canada to buy 45 of the CSeries 300 jetliner with an option of 30 more. It must be asked if that deal was brokered in the Prime Minister’s office. Bombardier is also waiting to hear about taxpayer money so it can somehow try to survive.
