Plant closure

[doctorwayne]

.....They need to add some strings to the money that they give out. If a large corporation, or anybody else for that matter, takes money form the government to keep a plant in an area, and then decides to move out in a short amount of time they should be required to pay back all funds plus interest and penalties immediately unless they go out of business and bk. Does the government in Canada just give away money to any large corporation that gives them a song and dance with no strings attached?

This seems to be pretty much standard practice nowadays, and it's been like that for a while. Firestone Canada got a large handout, many years ago, to re-equip their Hamilton, Ontario plant. Not very many years later, Firestone, and the equipment, moved south. Likewise for Westinghouse, which ran at least three plants, also in Hamilton. STELCO, the steel plant where I worked, was bought by U.S.Steel, with a promise, under the Canada Investment Act, to produce a certain amount of tonnage and employ a set minimum number of people for a specified number of years. With a downturn in the steel markets, followed by the recession, we all know how far that one went. To some extent, I understand U.S.S.'s position given the extenuating circumstances, but with improvements in the market, the situation is still grim. They locked-out employees at the Lake Erie Works for 8 months in a successful effort to change the pension plan, then repeated the same tactics at Hamilton, with a year-long lockout, just recently settled. However, operations remain very limited, with only the coke ovens, cold mill, and Z-line coating mill in operation. They have no plans to re-start the blast furnace, BOF, or slab/billet casters. Meanwhile, U.S.Steel's American operations are running at 90% capacity.
The "strings" attached to the handouts are there, they're simply not enforced, and that despite a Supreme Court ruling that U.S.Steel was guilty of contravening the Act.
Canada's current policy under the Canada Investment Act has been to rubber-stamp over 13,000 recent foreign takeovers of Canadian businesses, and there appears to be no end in sight. Big business, it seems, is running this country, and it is, in my opinion, a foretaste of what other developed countries will, or are, experiencing.

Wayne