{"id":24650,"date":"2014-03-12T09:28:57","date_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24650"},"modified":"2014-03-12T09:28:57","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T14:28:57","slug":"the-unheard-of-withdrawal-of-a-corporate-welfare-request","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/12\/the-unheard-of-withdrawal-of-a-corporate-welfare-request\/","title":{"rendered":"The unheard-of withdrawal of a corporate welfare request"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ottawacitizen.com\/opinion\/columnists\/stop+feeding+corporate+sharks\/9605513\/story.html\" target=\"_blank\">strange thing<\/a> happened in Ontario last week:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A major corporation, Chrysler, withdrew its request for federal and provincial subsidies for a multibillion-dollar revamp of its assembly plants in Windsor and Brampton. Decrying the fact that its request had become a \u201cpolitical football,\u201d Chrysler said it would fund \u201cout of its own resources whatever capital requirements the Canadian operations require.\u201d How about that! A capitalist firm acting like a capitalist firm.<\/p>\n<p>The reason this is so strange is, of course, that capitalist firms haven\u2019t behaved this way in a long time. Instead, they impress upon governments the importance of what they\u2019re doing in terms of jobs, innovation, economic growth, research and development and then not so subtly threaten to take their investments elsewhere if the governments don\u2019t come across with generous financial assistance. It\u2019s a genteel and widely accepted form of extortion, but extortion is what it is and it seems Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak\u2019s having called it that is what Chrysler is referring to in saying the issue has now become a political football. If that\u2019s true, then good for Hudak. He\u2019s already saved the province a couple of hundred million dollars even before becoming premier.<\/p>\n<p>Chrysler\u2019s decision is also strange in light of the tough-guy lecture its Canadian-raised CEO, Sergio Marchionne, gave our governments just a few weeks ago at the opening of an auto show in Toronto. Canada is \u201clike a guppy playing in shark-infested waters,\u201d he said. The car business \u201cis not a game for the faint-hearted. It takes resolve, and it takes cash.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A strange thing happened in Ontario last week: A major corporation, Chrysler, withdrew its request for federal and provincial subsidies for a multibillion-dollar revamp of its assembly plants in Windsor and Brampton. Decrying the fact that its request had become a \u201cpolitical football,\u201d Chrysler said it would fund \u201cout of its own resources whatever capital [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,6,84,53],"tags":[111,645,87,793],"class_list":["post-24650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","category-government","category-politics","tag-cars","tag-corporatewelfare","tag-ontario","tag-subsidies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6pA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24651,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24650\/revisions\/24651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}