TORONTO/MONTREAL - The Quebec government said it will invest $1 billion in Bombardier Inc’s CSeries jets in return for a near 50 percent stake in the struggling project, in what was seen as a risky move to protect jobs in the Canadian province. Shares of Bombardier fell 12.4 percent to C$1.41 on the Toronto Stock Exchange as the company burnt through $816 million in the third quarter due to weaker order flows. “It’s a risky situation, but it’s a two-way street,” Quebec Economy Minister Jacques Daoust told reporters. “We took it from the positive side. “Bombardier could have abandoned the CSeries program. They could have said ‘forget it.’” The fortunes of Quebec’s aerospace sector are closely tied to Bombardier. Its 18,000-strong workforce in Quebec is largely focused on aerospace, and it helps support many smaller part vendors and suppliers. Daoust said the company accounts for about 40,000 direct and indirect jobs in Quebec, with average salaries almost double the provincial average. “I cannot abandon the aerospace industry,” Daoust said at a news conference. DBRS Quebec debt analyst Travis Shaw said the investment was “not unmanageable” for the province but more information was required to gauge whether it could affect Quebec’s plan to balance its 2015/16 budget. “It’s not clear whether the money right now is coming from an existing account that has already been budgeted for or whether this is coming from an entirely new funding they need to arrange,” he said. Bombardier’s narrow-body CSeries line of jets, set to compete against Boeing Co’s 737 planes and Airbus Group’s A319 and A320 jets, has been delayed for years and is billions of dollars over budget. The struggle to get the CSeries project in the air has left Bombardier saddled with over $9 billion in debt. Bombardier has been looking at a range of options to raise cash, including sale of a stake in the CSeries and sale of a minority stake in its rail arm. Talks with Airbus around a joint venture on the CSeries fell apart earlier this month. “The most important metric in the quarter, in our view, was cash flow, and it missed materially,” JPMorgan analyst Seth Seifman said in a note about Bombardier’s earnings. He said the Quebec deal was one of many Bombardier would require as the company tries to establish a path forward. Bombardier lost $4.6 billion, or $2.20 a share, in the third quarter, compared with a net income of $74 million, or 3 cents a share, a year ago. The loss was tied largely to impairment charges on the CSeries and its Learjet 85 program, which is being mothballed. Excluding one-time items, Bombardier had break-even earnings. On that basis, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had expected a profit of 3 cents. Quarterly revenue fell 16 percent to $4.14 billion.