General Motors Canadian Dine-and-Dash

Mere months ago, our federal government said it would follow our American cousins and loan the North American automakers some much needed cash to stay afloat.

Today, General Motors did the corporate version of a dine-and-dash, by floating around rumours that they intend to close all of their Canadian operations. What happened to all that hard earned taxpayer capital our federal government handed them?

If General Motors (GM) Canada does close all Canadian operations, that will put over 12,000 Canadians out of work – and most likely on our already over-used unemployment social safety net – either welfare or Employment Insurance. Add that to the money our federal government has already signed over to GM Canada, and you might as well write-off a third of your taxes to GM Canada. That’s roughly how much money you paid some American-owned corporation, for nothing, nadda, zip.

It’s like going to a fancy restaurant, ordering the most expensive items on the menu, and just before the bill arrives, making a dash for the door.

Only difference is GM is making a dash for the border – with your money.

Back when the so-called “Big Three” domestic automakers – Ford, Chrysler and General Motors – threatened major layoffs, unless they got financing from the American government, I knew it was a scam. I was against it in previous blogs. I was against it when the American administration under George W. Bush and now Barak Obama said they’d gave in and contribute billions to this private sector business. And I was even more set against it when our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, said he’d lend millions to the Big Three here in Canada after the Americans agreed to the Big Three’s terrorist-like demands.

Terrorist-like demands?

Well think about it, what do terrorists do? They invoke fear in the public, through unreasonable demands, else they will harm as many people as they can.

The Big Three threatened plant closures, GM and Chrysler even threatened to go out of business completely, and declare Chapter 11 Bankruptcy if the public purse wasn’t opened for their pilfering. All these threats would put millions of people all over the world – but mostly in Canada and the States – out of work.

Sounds like a terrorist-like demand to me.

And today GM Canada continued to act no differently – instead of keeping their word to reorganize and protect Canadian jobs, they tell us they may just have to put over 12,000 Canadians out of work, when they close up and leave this country completely.

They are doing this campaign just like terrorists do too. Instead of releasing an official statement, or even talking to the media, or even their own employees and their employee’s unions, they circulate unofficial “rumours” via “undisclosed” and “anonymous” sources.

This is no different from those garbled grainy video and audio tapes so-called terrorist-leader Osama Bin Ladden releases to the media, leading to unofficial “rumours” of impending attacks via “undisclosed” and “anonymous” means.

If our federal government wants to toss away millions and millions and millions – and maybe even billions – of dollars to really benefit Canadians and their jobs, perhaps they should invest in truly Canadian companies.

And by that, I don’t mean the Canadian arms of some big American – or other nation’s – companies. I mean really Canadian companies – ones who started here in Canada, and still have their head offices here in Canada.

I’m still not a big fan of publicly funded governments providing seed money to private sector businesses, but if the money stays in Canada, that is far better than it being whisked away elsewhere, along with all those Canadian jobs.