"Hey Federal Government, we'd like you to help us out to the tune of a billion dollars, because we're such a big important employer here in Canada... also, we're going to slowly stop being such a big employer"
Do you mean Canadian government support? Not US?
In the late 1990's Embraer and Bombardier sued each other in the WTO which found both governments guilty of subsidies.
Embraer is preparing to sue Bombardier/Canada again: http://www.reuters.com/article/embraer-bombardier-idUSL2N18D...
And jet fighters etc. are usually made by different manufacturers altogether, except for military freighters.
There are of course self-sufficiency reasons too. If the West put an embargo in place against China for airliners, they'd be SOL. This is why they're trying to hard to make their own planes (and perhaps more importantly, engines).
Huge lock-in :)
Aircraft manufacturers are all semi-nationalized they are 'too big' even for private capital to compete on - barriers to entry far too high and too much risk.
Airbus is literally an EU creation. Boeing lives on defence contracts.
So it needs 'a national team playing for it' kind of thing.
There are a lot of jobs, it's very long term, it's big money, involves a lot of tech and R&D so it's a good industry to have if you can get it going. But it doesn't get going without playing 'home team'.
You don't really have a choice on subsidies if you want a home-grown aerospace industry in the current climate. Other countries subsidize heavily.
In theory we have international agreements preventing such things, but there are a lot of ways to subsidize a company.
Bombardier is one of the main anchors around which many major aircraft industry company are located. In turn those suppliers also help explain the Bell Helicopter Textron plant.
I'm thinking of companies like Safran Landing Systems (formerly Messier-Dowty), Pratt-Whitney Canada (one of, if not the, largest producer of turboprops and turboshafts engines), CAE (sims, avionic), Thales (avionic), Héroux-Devtek (landing gears), etc. Plus all the smaller subcontractors.
It isn't impossible that new competitors will emerge but it will be a long difficult road.
The design challenges (and off-the-shelf parts) for smaller aircraft are more viable.
Alternatively, you could start by building subsystems and expand to full aircraft.
I suspect you could divide the industry at some arbitrary point and argue signifibant maturity by then. 1950, 60, or 70 depending on whether you're considering manufacturers, technology, or airframes, by and large.
Consolidation does seem to be a very strong trend, and one that may prove difficult to reverse.
The layoffs mentioned here seem to be more related to the rail division than to aircraft manufacturing. The rail division which appears to have a lot of problems.
http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/bombar...
http://spacing.ca/toronto/2016/05/03/bombardiers-mexico-prob...