We aren't doing this to help Volkswagen. We're doing this to save jobs in Ontario. If those subsidies weren't given Volkswagen would simply set up everywhere.
So again, I'll ask, given that the government's primary concern is keeping high quality (and high paying) manufacturing jobs in Ontario, and specifically in Southwestern Ontario (which has become a bit of a rust belt), what specific evidence is there that reallocating that money to public transport will achieve those goals. No generic responses or lectures about the virtues of Capitalism or how evil corporations are.
Ah, so Volkswagen bullies us into giving them a shit ton of money, and we agree, no questions asked, like the good indentured servants of corporations that we really are? If there is, at all, any business value to selling VW e-cars in Ontario, then surely it would be good business sense for VW to invest in that market, no? What possible reason exists for us to subsidize it, instead? Other than, of course, the fact that the company is run by parasites who would never invest a penny of their hard "earned" profits when there are citizens to leech off of, instead? And if VW makes good on their "promise" and sets up elsewhere - depriving themselves of the opportunity to manufacture and sell vehicles locally, and requiring any e-cars sold in Ontario to be imported from other provinces or from the States, at additional expense - is that not, in effect, an admission that there is no business sense in having an e-car manufacturing facility at all, and giving them billions to prop it up doesn't make any sense?
I'm not sure why you bring up reallocating the money to public transport. I never argued anything of the sort; I'm against corporate welfare with or without worthier projects to invest in, instead. It is enough that we keep being told there's no money for anything, that inflation is bringing us to our knees, but apparently, it's perfectly OK to give money to wayward businesses because they threaten us, and we have no spine. But since you ask, the TTC has been having quite a bit of difficult getting money for their new subway trains. This is not a project I feel any particular inclination towards - in fact, all the hysteria about how keeping subway trains a few years longer than we otherwise would would cause the entire Bloor-Danforth line to collapse makes me feel the right thing to do would be to not give them a penny - but fair is fair. Why can't Toronto get money for new subway trains, but we give billions of dollars to VW?
BTW, if the factory in St. Thomas didn't exist before, how can this be "saving" jobs?
