The Trudeau Liberals quietly have written-off a $2.6 billion dollar loan to save Chrysler during the Great Recession despite the fact that Chrysler made a $4.3 billion profit in 2017. Not only is the taxpayer left holding the bag for the loan, the lack of transparency in the write-off that was revealed by a Freedom of Information request, has been criticized by the auditor-general. Both the Conservatives made the loan in 2009 and the Liberals, who have tried to hide it, are following their typical pattern of quiet corporate give-aways of corporate money.
The Liberal government has quietly written off a $2.6-billion auto-sector loan that was cobbled together to save Chrysler during the 2009 global economic meltdown. The write-off, among the largest ever for a taxpayer-funded bailout, is buried in a volume of the 2018 Public Accounts of Canada, tabled in Parliament on Friday. The reference contains no explanation for the write-off, identifying neither the business that received the loan nor the sector of the economy.
But CBC News has confirmed the money was lent on March 30, 2009, to Chrysler LLC by the federal government – a non-performing loan that grew with interest over the following nine years. The loan was made by the Harper government, in co-operation with the Ontario government. ...
At the time of the 2009 auto-sector bailouts in Canada and the United States, Chrysler was split in two: an "Old Chrysler" that went into bankruptcy and a "New Chrysler" that became viable and remains in operation today. Now called Fiat Chrysler, the international firm reported net profits of $4.3 billion US for 2017. ...
CBC News reported earlier this year, drawing on heavily censored documents obtained through the Access to Information Act, that the Liberal government had forgiven a large auto-sector loan. ...
Officials at the time refused to provide details, including the amount or the business that benefited, saying they were protecting "commercial confidentiality." Friday's Public Accounts documents were similarly opaque about the write-off, referring only to the precise value, $2,595,974,536 in Canadian funds.
Canada's auditor general has previously cited a lack of transparency over the bailouts. "We found it impossible to gain a complete picture of the assistance provided, the difference the assistance made to the viability of the companies, and the amounts recovered and lost," Michael Ferguson said in his fall 2014 report. There was no comprehensive reporting of the information to Parliament." ...
Industry Canada itself warned in 2014 that "neither Canada nor the U.S. expected any of the loans to be recovered from 'Old Chrysler'." It was not clear why the non-performing loan remained on the Canada Account books for four more years.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/chrysler-auto-loan-canada-account-write...