Canadian Politics Today

the company is owned by a wealthy family

While the Bombardier-Beaudoin family have 53% of the voting rights, they actually own only about 10% of the company. They created a special class share that gives them 10:1 voting rights. There are some advantages of this system as it allows them to keep the company from being bought out and assets sold as happens so much in the modern world of CrimeStreet "investing".

It would be interesting to have some real accounting of the government money invested in the company. Those that support the company claim most of government money has been paid back, and in addition there are the thousands of jobs and over $15 billion in corporate taxes paid. The usual detractors (e.g. Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Fraser Institute, etc.) however make different claims.