Taylor C. Noakes

Bombardier payment puts government priorities into question

By Taylor C. Noakes on April 19, 2015

On Thursday April 2nd 2015 there was a large anti-austerity protest in Montreal. Several hundred kilometres to the northeast of the city, at the Bombardier plant in the small Kamouraskan town of La Pocatiere, Quebec’s economy minister, Jacques Daoust, declared that if the province were truly in a state of austerity it could not issue a $31.5 million advance payment for new Metro trains.
Perhaps the students, teachers, nurses and diverse other public sector workers didn’t get the message, as apparently austerity had been overcome since the release of the budget on March 26th. Reported total budget cuts amounted to more than $700 million, with healthcare and education taking the hardest hit as anticipated.