Bailout pothole

Despite the CBC and many of its commenters being biased to the liberal side, one useful way of probing public opinion is ranking the comments by "Most Recommended".

Read the story on the stillborn auto bailout for Ontario and you'll know the Tories are in for a nasty shock if they go through with the cash handout. You don't need to be logged on to CBC to recommend a comment, and despite the obvious allegations of double voting et cetera the top 20 comments being all explicitly against the bailout does ring a few bells. Many of them are also hostile to the trade unions.

Tories, drop this bail-out nonsense. The US side isn't delivering, and their unions are hostile to making any concessions. It isn't going to go through, and Canadian taxpayer dollars will be wasted.

My suggested course of action would be to strike out the bailout language and go through the banks. Have a board of bankers examine a regular loan application, and if they give the green light forward the banks the money to cover the commitment, with the banks themselves footing a proportion of the bill (15%, say). Otherwise we'll be seen as ready to squander money and go into the red. Not Tory-style, not cool, not wise.

McGuinty on a sales trip

Globe and Mail reports that Dalton McGuinty is popping into Turin for a chat with the Fiat big honchos, to discuss the possibility of the company "making at least one model of the Alfa Romeo sports car before 2012". This choice is unadvisable for several reasons:

1) Fiat is in troubled waters anyway, with closures throughout Italy
2) If Italians don't buy Fiats, there's a reason. They blow.
3) Demand for sports cars is restricted, more so in Canada where snow isn't exactly a rarity
4) The timescale of this investment is too long to save the auto industry in Ontario

Leaving aside these considerations, McGuinty is also (according to the report) in talks with China, India and "folks in Germany". VolksWagen, however, already narrowed down the choices of its North American plants to three US locations. That should sound a few alarm bells, there's something wrong in the way the Ontario auto industry and labor are regulated.

Furthermore, why talk to the same China that can build the cars at virtually no cost (with contributions from Laogai slave camps) and cram them into a ship? Who in their sane Chinese mind would open up shop with higher wages, labor union bother and a meddling provincial government? Talks with India can lead somewhere, but the same considerations about labor price, unions and regulations come into play.

This makes no sense.