Yes, and what they will tell you is that the attrition rates are a tiny fraction of what they were in those days (I was there!) That the ab-initio training is something that they have an intrinsic involvement with. That the real world costs of putting a pilot in the seat mean that has to be done at minimum cost and risk. That has to be balanced against all of the other risks, but given the candidate is assuming the financial risk profile, those risks are already mitigated from onset. In other words, pick the best, it won't cost any more.
During the evolution of the last Three decades, the process went from selecting high time self improvers and military career changers, whose introductory training (type, base and line etc.) the airline paid for, to initially bonding the recruit for their training costs. The problem (certainly in the UK) was that it was difficult, expensive, and time consuming to enforce those contracts. You only have to look back to the early days of this website to find pages and pages of people posting threads about how they could successfully escape their obligations. The airlines found an answer!
The legal system in the US and possibly Canada may well lend itself to making enforcement of such contracts a cheaper and far easier process? Certainly in the UK (and probably other countries as well,) the evolution was brought about by some of the candidates. I remember reams of threads 15 years ago screaming about the unfairness of "bonding." It was slavery, servitude, and all the same terms you see bandied about today concerning modern candidate loaded costs.
There are very few airlines (or other businesses) where survival isn't measured by the size of the accessible cash pile. Businesses are simply not going to dip into that pile where they don't have to. They are not going to waste money chasing after broken promises or commitments (from their potential employees,) even if they have few compunctions about doing it themselves.
By all means sound cliché and repetitive, but navigating a passage through the realities of a potential career today or in the next decade, means carefully researching the history, evolution and realities of todays market, as well as the forecasts of what lies on the horizon for at least the next decade. It is astonishing how few people do! The directions have been loud and clear for a long time now, but an awful lot of people seem to smudge their keyboards with the earwax they have accumulated on both forefingers! You don't have to look (too far up) to find them either!