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That Boeing has a perfect right to seek the protection of its own country’s trade laws; that Canada would be the first to cry foul if the situations were reversed; that Boeing, a global company with annual revenues nearly six times the Canadian defence budget, shows no signs of caving to this amateurish extortion attempt: all these are of secondary importance.

So is the indisputable fact that Bombardier has benefited from massive amounts in government subsidy, not only with regard to the sale of 75 CSeries passenger jets to Delta Air Lines that is the subject of Boeing’s complaint, but on many occasions — as Boeing has done.

Governments offer it subsidies worth hundreds of millions of dollars, in return for which Bombardier agrees to take them

No, what is most striking about the current dispute is how completely the government of Canada has come to identify with a single, family-controlled business. Either it is unaware of how odd this looks, or it does not care.

Of course, this was always true to an extent, if not so bluntly stated. The decision to subsidize Bombardier in the first place meant elevating the interests of a single firm above those of the taxpayer, first, and of the economy, second, via the diversion of capital and labour into a money-losing aerospace manufacturer that might otherwise have been put to more efficient use.

But the goings-on in recent days, with a preliminary decision from the U.S. Commerce Department expected next week, have exceeded all prior standards of corporatism.

Not content with threatening Boeing directly, the prime minister also publicly enlisted Bombardier’s stablemates in the Canadian aerospace sector, no less dependent on government’s goodwill, to put pressure on it. Then there was the even odder spectacle of Bombardier’s union, headed by the Liberals’ new best friend, Jerry Dias, downing tools for a day — though how this was supposed to hurt Boeing’s interests, or advance Bombardier’s, eludes understanding.