MDA morass takes another victim

As the MacDonald Detwiller saga wends its way to the obvious conclusion that the US arms dealer ATK will eventually suck it up, another respected Canadian has been sucked into the vortex and spit out with.. eerr... spit on his shirt.

John Reid is the long time president of the Canadian Advanced Technology Association (CATA). He has been president since the invention of the cathode ray tube and he has just run afoul of of his fellow Canadians. John feels that the government of Canada should refrain from interfering in the transaction between ATK and MDA because the shoe might be on the other foot one day.

Have a nice retirement John. You will be missed.

Can you imagine the stink that would rise in Washington if a Canadian company decided to buy Boeing or Lockheed or Raytheon? Think that the Americans would say, "we had better refrain lest the shoe be on the other foot one day?" Not a chance.

MDA is gone. So is RADARSAT2, Canadarm, Dexter, David Florida Labs, Canadian aerospace jobs and billions of taxpayers dollars. It may take a bit of time to finalize the deal but they are gone. Harper will not protect Canada. Get used to it.

Taxpayers are being hosed to death by co-investment programs such as the Technology Partnership Program (TPP). The federal program loans billions of dollars to companies, including the Canadian branches of multinationals, but only sees 5-8% of the loans repaid. I wonder of MDA owes money under the TPP and if ATK will repay it? I wonder also if MDA, as a subsidiary of ATK, will grunt at the federal TPP trough in the future?

We need iron-clad agreements with companies who get TPP. If they get sold, they should repay the loans immediately. If the company goes bankrupt, TPP should be at the top of the creditors list (even higher than the greedy bloody banks). If the company cannot agree with these terms, then no TPP. If your renege on paying back the loan within the stringent timeframe established, you get sued and are disqualified from further TPP funding in the future.

TPP was a good program in theory. Unfortunately the execution of it stinks.