Québec feels like it’s completely abandoned and neglected by the federal government and has plenty of good reasons why. Here are two of them.

When I was in college, I had the chance to visit the Boisbriand GM factory which then produced Camaros but it since then closed and was replaced by a shopping mega centre with condos.

This was the last car factory in Québe with the previous one to have closed was the ill-conceived Hyundai factory in Bromont which closed in 1993 after only 4 years of operation.

It’s not by accident that car factories can’t survive in Québec: these factories need access to a constellation of suppliers, each of which needs to supply multiple factories to survive and therefore, the car industry tends to concentrate in a single area of each country.

For the US, it’s mainly around Detroit while in Canada, it’s mainly in Ontario.

When the Boisbriand GM factory closed, it meant a massive loss of jobs and yet, then PM of Québec Jean Charest explained to the media that while car factories are in Ontario, Aerospatial factories are in Québec.

Guess what? it’s a very good point indeed! The Aerospatial industry in Canada is centralised in Québec and provides hundreds of thousands of high paying specialised jobs which help drive Québec’s economy.

Air Canada for example, was until very recently required by federal law to operate an aircraft maintenance centre in Montreal, which was outsourced to Aveos Canada, a former Air Canada division.

We had to understand that when the GM plant closed, the Federal wouldn’t help Québec because the Federal was trying to concentrate car factories in Ontario for all of them to remain competitive while it was trying to concentrate all of the Aerospatial expertise in Québec for them to remain competitive.

This actually made a lot of sense, so when the 2008 crisis occurred and the Federal bailed out the car factories in Ontario, it seemed logical for the future of Canada’s economy.

The problem was that then Aveos was in trouble because Air Canada wanted to move it’s maintenance to Toronto despite a law requiring a maintenance centre in Montreal, Ottawa decided to lift the law which allowed the move to occur and Aveos to close despite Québec being the province of Aerospatial industries.

Furthermore, in 2016, when Bombardier needed help to launch it’s CSeries airplane series and received 1 Billion dollars from the Québec government, the Federal didn’t want to lift a finger.

In short:

1. It’s fine for the federal to concentrate the car industry in Ontario and the Aerospatial industry in Québec.
2. It’s fair to help the car industry in Ontario, because of #1 above.
3. It’s fair not to help the car industry in Québec, because of #1 above
4. What’s not fair, is to help an Aerospatial industry move from Québec to Ontario contrary to #1 above
5. It’s also not fair to not help the Aerospace industry in Québec when they have problems while helping the car industry in Ontario when they have problems.

And this is why Québec feels like it’s getting a raw deal.

Many people would explain that Québec is receiving money already as part of the federal transfers while Ontario is paying more than it’s fair share.

The problem is that the way for Québec to stop depending on Federal transfers is to help its industry thrive, after all, it’s Ontario’s industries which make it a rich province and its industries are performing well in part thanks to Federal help.

Shopping malls after all don’t contribute as much to the economy of a region as the factory they replaced: they are a negative pressure on the balance of trade while the factory was a positive factor.