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When Brian Mulroney awarded the $1.4-billion CF-18 fighter maintenance contract to Canadair of Montreal in 1986, he fuelled a degree of outrage in the West so deep that it contributed to the extinction of his party. Not only did Bristol Aerospace of Winnipeg underbid Canadair, its bid also received a substantially higher performance rating. Mulroney’s decision was one pure politics over fair competition, of Quebec over Manitoba. The betrayal was so bad that his credibility was irreparably damaged even in his own cabinet. Pat Carney, for example, thereafter came to mockingly remember his facial expression at the time as that Mulroney “CF-18 look.”

Reflection on the CF-18 caper could well save the current government from a similar backlash over a Bombardier bailout. The aircraft maker, which swallowed Canadair years ago, has its hands out for more than $1 billion in relief from taxpayers, apparently because business is tough right now. The problem for the government is that business is also tough out West, owing to a crash in the price of oil. Alberta, ground zero of the crash, is receiving two things from the Trudeau government: fast-tracking of a few hundred million dollars in stabilization and infrastructure, and a continued hog tie of proposed pipelines in bureaucratic red tape. Western Canadians, never fond of being told to move to the back of the proverbial bus (think National Energy Program and CF-18), will undoubtedly compare a Bombardier bailout with their own glad tidings from Ottawa.