Okay Bryan, I guess you have convinced me.

The loan guarantee is not like an outright grant or a gift so I concede that it should not be considered an outright subsidy.  But I hope you will concede that this is a major concession to Porter that made it possible to buy their fleet of airplanes. 

Your argument that it benefits Bombardier is true.  As far as I can make out Bombardier has been subsidized by the federal government to such an extent that it could hardly be considered independent company, and this did not begin recently.  Bombardier was a favorite of the Trudeau government and every government since.

But the loan guarantee program was very, very important in the development of Porter because this is how the company acquired their planes.  As far as we can make out, and remember this is a private company so we have no access to their financial records, Porter, or one of Robert Deluce's companies, raised enough money from private investors to purchase the first three or four aircraft.  The company now has 14 planes and Duluce recently said Porter will have twenty planes by next April.  At least sixteen and possibly more of these aircraft have been bought through the loan guarantee program. 

If that is not a duck then tell me, what would you call a duck?  This is how Porter financed their acquisition of planes and it would not have been possible without the government backing these loans.

But for fairness, in the future when I talk about subsidies to the TPA and Porter I will not call the money raised under the loan guarantee program a subsidy.  I will explain in a footnote where Porter got the money to buy the planes.

Thanks, Bill Freeman