My latest, on the Liberals’ unsettling use of an emergency loan provision as a lever to intrude themselves into corporate decisions about everything from dividends to executive pay to “how their future operations will support environmental sustainability.” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-having-forced-firms-into-dependency-the-government-dictates-terms-for/

1. What has any of this to do with the stated purpose of the program: saving jobs?
2. Even if these were appropriate concerns of govt, since when was failure to comply punishable by, as it were, death — which is what would follow for these corporations if the loans were withheld?

3. This isn’t a matter of “you win some, you lose some,” the inevitable ups and downs of capitalism. These aren’t failing or mismanaged companies. The only reason they’re in trouble is because the govt ordered them to shut down.

4. That might have been necessary as an emergency measure. But the point of the exercise was supposed to be to freeze the economy in place until it was safe to resume operations — not to perform all sorts of experiments on it while it was frozen.