Bum’s rush for Bombardier

The pressure will soon be on Bombardier Inc. to get serious about splitting the company into its rail and aerospace operations.

Each are troubled, but might fare better on its own, solely focused on their respective businesses.

Ontario last week told the Montreal-based Bombardier it is terminating its $770-million contract to buy all 182 light-rail vehicles (LRVs) needed for extensive expansion to Toronto’s public transit network.

A pilot Bombardier LRV to have arrived in Toronto three years ago missed its latest delivery deadline last week. By the time it does arrive, Ontario will have given part of the LRT contract to eager bidders Siemens AG of Germany and France’s Alstom S.A.

In a separate fiasco, Bombardier has been a chronic annoyance for Toronto Transit Commission commuters, made to cope with unreliable and late Bombardier equipment.

Post-Nortel and the halcyon days of BlackBerry, Bombardier is Canada’s biggest tech champion. It has long been nurtured by corporate welfare, and informal but real Buy Canada practices, notably in Ontario.

Squandering those advantages, Bombardier has worked hard to exemplify what a customer-unfriendly enterprise looks like. It deserves its bum’s rush, which might finally teach Bombardier to shed the arrogance that drove Nortel to an early grave.

Brexit chaos

It’s back to the drawing board this week for Theresa May, the British PM, after last week’s U.K. High Court ruling that she must gain parliamentary approval before invoking Article 50 of the European Union charter.

May roiled global markets when she announced she intends in March to pull that trigger, at which point Britain irrevocably ceases to be a member of the European Union (EU), and a maximum of two years of divorce negotiations begin.

In finding that May lacks the divine right to yank Britain from the EU on her own, the High Court has made it all the more likely that Britain won’t quit the EU.

It’s long been thought that a majority of U.K parliamentarians prefer the status quo of a U.K. with a leading voice in the EU. (That’s why May, rushed replacement for the discredited David Cameron, was intent on side-stepping parliament.)

This is a sharp disappointment for the EU’s other 27 members, spearheaded by Germany, who have been pressing the U.K. to get on with staying or leaving.

Even if Brexit doesn’t happen, the contempt for immigrants that fuelled the anti-EU vote will remain.

Meanwhile, May’s ineptitude and high-handedness will soon bring calls for her resignation.

America: ‘failed state’?

It’s difficult to see how the Nov. 8 balloting in the U.S. presidential contest will produce a winner.

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The “winner’s” margin of victory will be narrow, and supporters of the loser will have even more than the usual difficulty accepting the outcome.

That’s especially the case if Hillary Clinton wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote — the reverse of the botched 2000 U.S. presidential election.

If Clinton does win, “Republicans will immediately launch impeachment proceedings against her,” says Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate economist, referring to the FBI’s quixotic treatment of Clinton’s emails while she was U.S. Secretary of State.

The “winner” will also face a divided Capitol Hill, since the GOP is near-certain to retain control of Congress.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were able to get legislation passed only during the first two years of their eight-year tenures, before the Democrats lost Capitol Hill.

The supposed winner on Tuesday will lack even that two-year start. An outcome whose legacy is gridlock, with an impeachment drive thrown in, bodes ill for American business decision-making “because America is perilously close to being a failed state,” says Krugman.

Earnings this week

Monday: Air Canada

Tuesday: Cineplex, Valeant Pharmaceuticals

Wednesday: CAE, Sun Life Financial, Cara Operations

Thursday: Manulife Financial, Canadian Tire,

Friday: Onex, Power Corp.

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