The American multinational Boeing is injecting $240 million into Quebec and will thus benefit from its center of expertise in the field of aerospace. This investment will be used in particular to create an innovation zone, announced with great fanfare on Tuesday by Prime Minister François Legault in Montreal.
In addition to the $240 million in investments announced by Boeing, the Quebec government is extending $85 million for the creation of “Espace Aéro”, the new aerospace innovation zone which will extend to Longueuil, Mirabel and Montreal.
A handful of companies established here — including Pratt and Whitney, Airbus, Bombardier, Flying Whales and H55 — are injecting a total of $60 million into various innovation projects.
“With the new Espace Aéro innovation zone, we are bringing together companies, universities and research centers to innovate, to prepare the aerospace of tomorrow and to create wealth in Quebec. What pride! », Underlined Prime Minister François Legault, during the announcement which took place at the Palais des congrès.
“A gift” for Boeing
Prime Minister Legault was delighted that Quebec would become “the only place in the world where the two aviation giants, Airbus and Boeing, are directly present.”
The investment announced by Boeing represents “good news”, judges Mehran Ebrahimi, professor in the Department of Management at UQAM, and director of the Aeronautics and Civil Aviation Observatory.
“But we are the ones giving a gift to Boeing, not the other way around,” he said. “We have technology and expertise here that is lacking at Boeing. They moved away from it because they were so into financial logic. In a way, Boeing is siphoning off our expertise. They don’t invest in us for nothing,” argues the expert.
Mr. Ebrahimi also believes that the economic benefits offered by Boeing are not as important as they seem. As a reminder, last November, the federal government placed an order for at least 14 P-8A Poseidon surveillance planes from Boeing for more than $10 billion, without going through a call for tenders. Bombardier therefore did not have the opportunity to present an offer to the government.
“We are the ones providing them a service. If we had made these planes ourselves, with Bombardier, we could have benefited from an important industrial project for decades and we gave up on that. It was handed to Boeing on a silver platter. Which is absolutely unacceptable,” argues the expert.
A highly anticipated innovation zone
The creation of an aerospace innovation zone in the greater Montreal region was widely awaited by businesses in the area.
It is the fourth of its kind to see the light of day in Quebec, after the quantum zone in Sherbrooke, that of digital technologies in Bromont, and the Energy Transition Valley for batteries in Mauricie–Centre-du-Québec.
“We know that Quebec, when we talk about aerospace, is the third site in the world for aircraft manufacturing after Seattle and Toulouse,” recalled Prime Minister Legault.
In this sector, the average salary is around $80,000, he also noted. “Obviously, our finance minister likes it because it generates additional revenue with the taxes that are paid,” added Mr. Legault.