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He doesn’t like to say he told you so.

But — when he was running for a chance to be Canada’s next prime minister — Kevin O’Leary warned that when governments use taxpayers’ dollars to prop up failing businesses, all that comes out of it is failure.

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Now that General Motors has announced it is closing its historic Oshawa assembly plant, the private businessman and analyst says there is an important lesson to be learned.

“The GM Oshawa plant closing is proof that government bailouts never work and Canadian taxpayers always lose,” the Shark Tank and Dragon’s Den star told the Toronto Sun.

Out of the $4 billion Canada offered in loans, bailouts and stock purchases, most agree it didn’t pay off in the end.

“GM was a poorly managed company that should have been allowed to go bankrupt and restructure,” he said. “Instead, Canadian taxpayers were offered extraordinary returns and long-term jobs. They got neither.”

The proof came Monday with the devastating GM announcement.

When the automaker said in January 2017 it was cutting 600 jobs at the CAMI plant in Ingersoll in favour of a plant in Mexico, O’Leary said the same thing.

“The taxpayer, you and me, paid for this,” he said in a Global TV interview. “We were promised that these jobs would stay in Ontario — they’re not. The government did a hell of a bad job negotiating that deal. Who negotiated that deal? If they worked for me they’d be fired now. You have to be a better manager if you’re going to govern a province as big as Ontario. ”

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O’Leary was right. And here we are again.

This time it’s nearly 3,000 jobs and thousands more in spin-off businesses.

And those who are even considering the prospect of throwing more taxpayer money to keep remaining GM jobs, should stop, O’Leary says.

“Next time the government wants to invest in the private sector on your behalf, remember how poor they are as fiduciaries,” he told me. “Governments spend money as if it is not theirs, and it’s not, it’s yours.”