It’s possible that Bombardier is not the biggest recipient of corporate welfare in Canadian history.

That dubious honour might belong to the Canadian Pacific Railway, which was granted big chunks of valuable public land by the federal government in the 19th century.

Or it might belong to the Hudson’s Bay Co., which was given suzerainty over much of what is now Canada by the British Crown in the 17th century.

But whatever its exact place in the subsidy ranking, Bombardier is certainly up there. The Quebec-based transportation giant and its predecessor companies have received close to $3 billion in government loans and grants over the years.

And more often than not, the company has rewarded its benefactors by kicking them in the teeth.

Which is what it did last week, when it announced plans to lay off 3,000 workers in Ontario and Quebec.

Read more:

Bombardier to cut 5,000 jobs, sell Downsview operation

Bombardier defends CEO's absence from special meeting following 5,000 layoffs

TTC official raised red flags about Bombardier streetcar quality control

Some of these workers may be taken on by the aerospace companies that are buying portions of Bombardier’s business. But so far there are no guarantees.

The company said the asset sales will net it $900 million while the cutbacks will save an additional $250 million a year.

It said it wants to streamline its operations.

This comes two years after Bombardier laid off 5,000 Canadian workers in another effort to streamline operations. The aim then was to focus on its C Series passenger plane.

The company received $1.4 billion in loans and grants from the federal and Quebec governments to aid in this endeavour. It responded by giving huge bonuses to senior executives.

Ultimately, for reasons that weren’t entirely its fault, Bombardier gave away control of its C Series program to European competitor Airbus — while receiving nothing in return.

The Canadian and Quebec governments, which had bankrolled much of the aircraft’s development, also received nothing.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

All in all, it is hard to like Bombardier.

Torontonians will know it as the manufacturer of $1 billion worth of pricey streetcars that don’t work.

Bombardier famously has been unable to deliver on time the 204 cars ordered by the Toronto Transit Commission nine years ago. As my Star colleague Ben Spurr reported, most of those that have been delivered contain welding defects that require them to be taken out of service for repair.

To add insult to injury, the defective streetcar parts were manufactured largely in low-wage Mexican plants. Bombardier still has railcar operations in Kingston and Thunder Bay. But they focus on assembly.

So much for Toronto’s laudable effort to buy Canadian.

Bombardier exemplifies everything that can go wrong in so-called public private partnerships. It took over publicly owned aerospace firms in Ontario and Quebec, largely because government wanted to get out of the airplane manufacturing business. But then it continued to rely on government aid to keep going.

Similarly, it bought rail car plants in Thunder Bay and Kingston that the Ontario government of the day was desperate to unload. But it remained the province’s favoured subway and streetcar manufacturer, its status even protected in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Somewhere along the way, Bombardier became a multinational with operations in Europe, contracts in Central Asia and factories in Mexico. Its rail division is headquartered in Berlin.

It became so big that governments in Ottawa, Quebec and to a lesser extent Queen’s Park couldn’t allow it to fail.

Yet in spite of being intimately intertwined with government, it remains a private firm dedicated to the profits of its owners.

Governments may see it as a vehicle for creating good jobs. But as Bombardier demonstrated again last week, it can eliminate those good jobs any time it wants.

Read more about: