The incredible shrinking Bomber

Bombardier Inc has received so much Canadian taxpayer money over the years that it's practically a part of the public sector.  Federal and Provincial (Quebec and Ontario) governments routinely justify each new handout by lauding the company as one of Canada's high-tech manufacturing champions.

That's becoming an increasingly implausible claim as the company sells itself off piecemeal.  The latest division on the block is the regional jet (CRJ) division, once a big money-spinner but now a source of nothing but red ink as the order book dries up.  Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is reportedly kicking the tires for a possible takeover of the division, though no deal has yet been concluded.  Bombardier basically gave away its much-ballyhooed C-series jet program to Airbus Industrie last year,  so it's likely that very soon Bombardier's once-sprawling aviation enterprise will be reduced to a maker of executive jets.

This would leave Bombardier as mainly a manufacturer of passenger rail equipment, which is somewhat ironic in itself, given the primitive nature of rail transportation in Canada.  Is this much of a basis for an ongoing business?  Well, consider that Bombardier is currently behind on deliveries on two contracts in Toronto (streetcars and light rail vehicles), with the company on the hook for liquidated damages in the case of the streetcar contract; it's behind on two contracts with Transport for London (trains for London Overground and Crossrail), with free travel for a month promised to London Overground users to compensate for the delays; it's behind on deliveries and paying out compensation on a contract with Swiss Railways; and it's been excluded from bidding altogether on a contract in New York because of serious doubts about its ability to perform.

It's almost always a good idea for conglomerates to take a hard look at their businesses once in a while and focus back on the things they're good at.  The problem with Bombardier is that it doesn't actually seem to be very good at anything any more.  More deadbeat than national champion, alas.  It's hard to see how I and the rest of the taxpayers of Canada are ever going to see any return on our "investment" in the company. 

UPDATE, June 7: Here's the Toronto Star's David Olive with his take on Bombardier.  This sentence tells you all you need to know about Canada's biggest corporate welfare recipient:  "Headquartered in Berlin, the company is among Canada’s few large multinationals..."  The City of Kitchener, Ontario, was known as Berlin a century ago, but Olive is of course referring to the current capital of Germany.