Last week, I was fortunate to be able to attend Aviation Week’s Annual Laureate Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. It was a great event, in part, because Bombardier’s Global 7500 was named the Grand Laureate winner in the Business Aviation category. 

Anyone up for some good news about a Canadian business?  Bombardier just announced that its new business aircraft - the Global 7500 - set a record for the longest non-stop flight by a business jet  - over 8,150 nautical miles.

Lee Sander, the new president for the Americas Region, wanted to re-establish the facts and reassert that Bombardier Transportation is a leader in the rail industry. However, the Toronto Star editorial team refused to give us a right of reply.

Today, Bombardier employs more than 69,500 people worldwide, including 23,000 in Canada. This number reflects an increase of almost 3,500 people over last year and puts Bombardier’s total employment around the same level as when we began our five-year turnaround plan in November 2015.

The Globe has every right to make decisions about what they deem newsworthy.  But, these decisions reveal much about the paper’s commitment to fairness, balance and objectivity. Moreover, it is a real stretch to see any connection between the company’s use of sales agents and the shareholder proposal for additional disclosure on lobbying activities. 

A further story by reporter Geoffrey York on the Gupta investigation again misleads readers about the actual sequence of events at the time the Guptas were vetted for our sale of a business aircraft.  

The Globe’s headline warns ominously that “questions are mounting” as to whether Bombardier provided a special discount on the Global 6000 sold to the Gupta company in order to win a portion of a large South African rail contract. The answer to this question is no