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Canada adds billions to automaker bailout
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Canada will provide $2 billion in emergency loans to American automakers to protect hundreds of thousands of auto workers in its country, the Canadian government announced today.
The provincial government of Ontario, home to most of Canada's auto production facilities, will provide an additional $1.3 billion.
Around 400,000 Canadians in Ontario alone are economically dependent on the auto industry, Canadian officials estimated.
The Canadian action follows yesterday's White House decision to provide $13.4 billion in immediate loans from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to General Motors and Chrysler in an effort to stave off their immediate collapse, plus an additional $4 billion early next year to help their recoveries.
As with the American loans to the troubled automakers, the Canadian money comes attached to terms that lets the loans be recalled this spring if the companies don't demonstrate satisfactory progress in their planned restructuring.
The Canadian newspaper National Post had reported last week that General Motors was promising to build a new plant in Ontario to build a 2012-model Buick Regal sedan in exchange for loans, but that deal has not come up in today's news coverage.
As in other bailouts of various institutions worldwide, Canadian officials said they hope to see their cash infusions into the two automakers as loans that will be repaid instead of just donations to local employers.
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