Ottawa will not disclose whether companies that received subsidies have kept their job-creation promises, and internal documents suggest bureaucrats do not even track the information, which some experts say raises accountability concerns.
“For many of the programs listed, recipients were not required to report on the number of jobs,” the note said. “As a result, in jobs fields, zero may designate information that is not available.” After weeks of e-mail exchanges and phone calls, the government provided an unsigned four-page statement about jobs created as a result of SIF.
Neither the statement nor the website lists the number of jobs created, as reported through the government’s monitoring. The statement did not say if any funds had been repaid. The agreement said CAE committed to creating 400 new jobs and maintaining 3,900 existing jobs through the funding. Spokesperson Anne von Finckenstein said that CAE had created 500 jobs and maintained 4,300 as of March 31, 2022.