English transcript

China has never yet been able to get an internationally certified significant commercial aircraft.

They have some smaller ones that they can use locally, but neither the Americans or

the Europeans, which are the agencies that the rest of the world looks to to see whether

you can add a big passenger jet to your fleet, are anywhere near certifying anything built

completely in China.

So, about 10 years ago, Bombardier, a Canadian aerospace company that you know for making

the Global Series and Challengers, decided it was going to get into the commercial aircraft

building business.

And it built something called the C-Series, which was the most modern, single-aisle, extremely

fuel-efficient, amazing plane.

And we're in the process, they got it certified, they were in the process of trying to sell

it, and Airbus and Boeing did everything they could do to prevent Bombardier from being

able to sell those aircraft.

They were talking to all their customers, don't you dare put in an order for the C-Series,

don't you dare, don't you dare.

And finally, Bombardier started really struggling.

They had this beautiful aircraft, but they just couldn't get any customers for it.

So, what happens?

China comes knocking on Canada's door, on Bombardier's door, and pulls up a dump truck

full of money and says, we'll keep all the jobs in Bombardier across the country, Canada

won't be trouble in this, but we'll buy Bombardier, we'll be able to get ourselves a commercial

jet.

So, Boeing and Airbus that were busy trying to put Bombardier out of business, because

they didn't want Bombardier to be a contest, almost drove us into China's arms where China

would have been obviously a much more significant competitor to those two dominant players.

But concretely, it took me around the G7 table in Sicily, my second G7 in 2017, saying to

Macron and Merkel and Trump, you are driving us into Chinese hands to protect jobs, they're

willing to pay anything to get this, we don't want this to happen for our prosperity as

Western countries, what can we do about it?

Because Boeing is busy trying to put Bombardier out of business, and Airbus has crossed its

arms and indifferent.

Well, six months later, because of those conversations, Airbus bought the C-Series, which now flies

as the Airbus 220, they're made in Canada and elsewhere, and we now, we're now, Canada's

now the fifth Airbus country.

So, this was an example of internal economic pressures and coercion, that where we're busy

competing with ourselves as like-minded nations, we almost ended up giving a significant competitor

that doesn't share the same approach and views as us, a significant let up.

And that wouldn't have happened if I and my team hadn't said, hey, guys, this is the trend

line, we need to make that happen.

We're seeing a similar thing happen right now with President Trump threatening the Canadian

auto industry, where we're now having to look at working with China because the American

industry doesn't want to work with us anymore.