Canadian Government Denies Diamond Dollars

The decision of the Canadian Government to not loan Diamond Aircraft Canada the proposed $35 million is a major setback, but Christian Dries appears to have the deep pockets necessary to get the D-Jet certified using other means. Sad to see those employees lose their jobs when certification is finally in sight. For their sake I hope Diamond finds financing elsewhere.

An old joke comes to mind: How do you turn a healthy aircraft company into an unhealthy company? By sinking huge amounts of money into a fast, sexy looking one-pilot jet that nearly bankrupts the company. We've seen plenty other examples of this kind of questionable dedision making. Remember the Starship that nearly put Beechcraft into recievership? One of the biggest flops in aviation history, right up there with the Hughes H-4 Hercules (aka Spruce Goose) and the Dehavilland Comet. And who can forget the now moribund Epic Jet, another colossal flop?

Other major manufacturers (Cirrus, Piper) have similarly sunk big dough into light jets that may or may not have a market or reach certification, much less producing adequate numbers to financially justify the projects. Apparently the wealthy, upwardly mobile American pilot simply can no longer risk being seen flying behind a mundale piston engine, instead demanding a personal rocket his equally weathy pals will be impressed by.

Not sure why Diamond would take on that much red ink to build a light jet when they were doing so well building the DA-20, 40 and 42. You'd think the DA-50, potentially a very strong competitor to the highly sucessful SR-22, would have been a less costly aircraft to develop with plenty of potential buyers available. It would seem they've lost the good sense that got them where they were pre-recession. Haven't sales for even the lightest of bizjets gone over the cliff since the financiual meltdown?

If the D-Jet fails, at least Christian Dries will have a cool-looking, $100 million "one off" to fly around in.

Douglas M
Surrey, BC

More lunacy. The horrible conservatives won't save jobs to loan (re: give) money to a company! Liberals made a promise (of giving money) that the mean conservatives won't honor! Woe is the aircraft industry! How will we survive this horrible onslaught of fiscal responsibility of having governments live within their means, just as, in fact, Diamond should? We just don't care about jobs! We are soo mean because people will be out of work!

What liberals having never understood, nor will they ever understood, is what Ben Franklin once said, and I'm paraphrasing, "they best way to keep people out of poverty is to make it as difficult as possible for them to stay in it." When we keep providing money to people from the public trough, we make them dependent on the goverment, not themselves. In addition, we setup a situation where people will vote for representatives that will vote more money back to them, rather than voting for those who will be responsible with the public money and not give money for political expendidency. Conseratvism is far more compassionite than liberalism, because we believe in helping people help themselves. And that they should be responsible for, and held accountable to, their own decisions. Now sometimes, employees will be the victims of bad decisions by management, or they will be victims of a poor economy and lose their jobs. Just as in other cases, employees can reap the rewards of good management or of a good economy. But many business owners are former employees that saw a niche in their industry and created a new business that employed people that wouldn't have been employed before. Employees aren't victims, they are people givin their time in exchange for compensation. Sometimes that works out great, other times not. But it was not the duty of government, as it was founded in Canada or the US to bail out employees and created government dependents. I was against Bush's bailout in '08 and am against all bailouts now. These bailouts do nothing but prolong the inevitable crash or demise of a company. Had GM or Chrysler gone out of business, then other auto manufacturers would have stepped up with employment as their own businesses picked up due to the vacumm created by the loss of needed production of vehicles. Think how quickly Ford might have grown had GM just been allowed to go under, as it should have. Then we would have had a healthy company, that isn't taking government funds. Additionally, the GM and Chrysler bailouts weren't beneficial to many people. The union membership benefited. Dealers, who were not unionized were decimated for political reasons. Dealers don't cost auto manufacturers money, they make money by paying flooring costs (financing costs for maintaining inventory). Bond holders were decimated because their senior debt position was illegally negated in order to provide government money into the union pensions and to give unions ownership of GM and Chrysler. Money was taken from Bond holders to give to unions. How many people's lives were destroyed in that process? Hmm? Anybody with a income bearing mutual fund had at least GM Bonds in it. How do you think those funds did after the bailout? How many peoples retirements were negatively affected? Their income streams cut, in the name of protecting the workers and compasion!

Pia, you are paid to write an article based on the facts. All you have done is show your economic illiteracy to all to see.