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. The CSeries will be controlled in Europe, it will be built in Alabama, but it will still be subsidized in Canada. (Which raises a question: what happens if Airbus sells the planes made there to Air Canada? All the Airbus deal has done is crystallize past folly. It’s true that 50 per cent of some sales is better than 100 per cent of no sales (or as Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard put it, “selling planes makes money, not selling planes makes no money”).

Source: National Post October 19, 2017 00:22 UTC