Subject to the passage of the legislation by Parliament, the economic and community development activities of the Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation ECBC, including the associated budget, will transition over to ACOA
That passage is from an Open Letter to Cape Breton penned by Rob Moore, the Minister of State for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. He’s writing to to let Cape Bretoners know that Enterprise Cape Breton Corp., the regional development agency is going to be wrapped into ACOA’s activity. I’ve emphasized the point, in the passage above that ECBC budget — which is just under $50 million this year — also goes to ACOA.
There are about 150,000 people who live in Cape Breton. There are 170,000 living in the federal riding of Oak Ridges-Markham, next to Toronto. I guarantee the federal government is not pumping in $50 million a year to Oak Ridges-Markham — but here’s a group of 150,000 Canadians that’s getting an annual economic development subsidy of $333 per person.
ACOA is one of six federally-funded regional development agencies that, between them, get about $1 billion a year to hand out for often questionable “economic development.”
For example, today, ACOA announced that an agriculture industry groups — cranberry growers in Atlantic Canada — needed $50,000 to hold a meeting. Can you imagine if, say, oil sands producers were given $50,000 to hold a meeting in Edmonton. Oil sands development, like cranberry production, is not a charity. Those who engage in it do it for a profit and those profits ought to fund industry meetings.
Regional development agencies can often be the source of pork-barrel politics. Why, there’s ACOA again today, handing out subsidized loans to two for-profit private sector firms that happen to be in the ridings of two Conservative MPs, both of whom will be in tough fights to hold their seats in 2015. (Here’s one, here’s the other)
And now ACOA will take on ECBC budget and have extra $50 million to play with. More meetings of cranberry producers! Why if they just doubled the number of meetings they held ….
pays to have relatives in certain positions.