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What these naysayers overlook is how neatly the deal fits with the business strategy the company has been pursuing all along. It is, after all, a fairly straightforward step from selling planes for less than they cost to make — in effect, giving away half of every plane — to giving away half of the equity in the planes. And whatever else may have changed as a result of the deal, the basic elements of the Bombardier business model — sucking subsidies from the government — have not. The CSeries will be controlled in Europe, it will be built in Alabama, but it will still be subsidized in Canada.

Indeed, it’s not quite right to say that Airbus is getting its stake for free. In fact Bombardier is paying it to take it (much as Bombardier was effectively paid to buy De Havilland and Canadair, decades ago). Not only is Airbus paying no cash and assuming no debt, but Bombardier will remain on the hook for any future losses on the project, up to US$700 million. In addition, Airbus receives warrants to buy 100 million subordinate voting shares in Bombardier at the price they were trading at last week; those shares are already worth almost 20 per cent more than that.

Still, if the point of bailing out Bombardier so often, at so great expense, was supposed to be to save jobs in Quebec, it’s a little galling to see Canadian public dollars now being used to create jobs in Alabama. (Which raises a question: what happens if Airbus sells the planes made there to Air Canada? Would we be obliged to levy a duty on it, as a countervail to our own subsidies?) Supposedly the federal government is going to attach conditions to the transaction requiring Airbus to maintain current levels of employment in Canada, but how binding can these be, really? What leverage does it have? If the deal doesn’t go ahead, Bombardier goes under: that much is clear, weighed down as it is not only by the U.S. tariffs but its own uncertain prospects, so far as these feed perceptions it will not be able to deliver the CSeries. In which case no jobs are saved.