General Motors, the world’s largest auto manufacturer for the last 70 years (until 2008), continues to baffle. Not only has the company been slow to shift production from larger vehicles to smaller ones and unable to force the UAW to make concessions, now there’s word from the Windsor Star that GM has rejected CDN $3,000,000,000 in loans from our fiscally-liberal Conservative government. WTF? Isn’t this the same company that went begging to the US Congress last month in its private jets to beg for tens of billions of American taxpayer dollars. But now my Canadian taxpayer dollars aren’t good enough? With my money, and yours, GM could have bought back the fleet of private jets that it sold in the wake of jet-gate. 

Well guess what GM, my money is just as good as Joe the Plumber’s. 

So why won’t GM take it?

GM Canada’s spokesman Stew Low claims that GM “is continuing [its] restructuring and has initiated more self-help actions to conserve capital, which has allowed [it] to take the necessary time to work (in the short term) with all [its] stakeholders to determine how to complete restructuring needs for long-term sustainable viability.” Apparently GM Canada has picked up the book How To Restructure a Company For Dummies, but refuses it to share the biblically-important book with its US counterpart, leaving the Yanks to ask US Congress for enough money to buy their own copy. 

Jokes aside, this rejection of Canadian scrill is not a good sign for Canadians. If it were to accept the loans, GM might feel beholden to keep manufacturing and assembly plants here opens. No loans, no guilt, no plants, no jobs. If GM rejects Canadian taxpayer dollars, what’s to stop them from shifting jobs to Mexico where the labour is nice and cheap? Actually, they’ve already started… The rejection of the loans by GM means that Harper and his boyz have failed in their attempt to secure Canadian jobs. 

Alternatively, The General might be feigning strength to Canadian consumers in an effort to bolster sales. This strategy might actually work. For about 2 days. Then GM is up the creek without a $3 billion paddle.  

Either way, GM should have taken my money. 

[Windsor Star via Autoblog]