Ford slams report criticizing business aid
Premier Doug Ford has fired back at the auditor general after she criticized his government’s payout of almost $1 billion in COVID-19 relief to ineligible businesses, insisting her findings were “not 100 per cent accurate.”
Questioned in the legislature on Thursday by NDP Leader Andrea Horwath about a “$1 billion tax dollar boondoggle,” Ford said the funds were quickly provided to struggling businesses after the pandemic hit.
In her annual report Wednesday, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk said that early in the pandemic, the province dispersed about $210 million to businesses that didn’t qualify and $714 million to companies whose losses only amounted to $225 million.
Lysyk also blasted the Progressive Conservative government for a “troubling” absence of controls, which appeared to sting Ford.
“What the auditor general reported is not 100 per cent accurate,” the premier said, noting she characterized the $225 million as total losses when they were a year-over-year comparison for a one month period — April 2019 versus April 2020.
“It was one month, and you’re telling me businesses only lost money for one month? They lost it throughout the whole pandemic,” he fumed.
Still, Ford emphasized that even “with a snapshot in time of $225 million, are we going after bad actors? We’ll go after bad actors — 100 per cent we’re going to go after them.” Without the pandemic funds, he said, some 120,000 businesses could have gone under.
But Horwath pointed out the report says the government “did not attempt to recover these amounts, and subsequently wrote them off as uncollectible in August.”
Liberal MPP Amanda Simard noted the auditor found some funding went to businesses with suspicious applications and others that did not have addresses in Ontario.
“This government is basically a terrible version of Oprah, and with taxpayer money,” said Simard (Glengarry-Prescott-Russell).
“You get the grant, you get the grant. Outside of Ontario? You get a grant as well. You’re not eligible? Whatever, you get a grant anyway. Everybody gets a grant,” she said mocking the Tories,
“Oh, but you in the back, in sectors that we signalled out at the outset, you obviously don’t get a grant. Too bad. We get to decide which ineligible business gets the grant. This is unacceptable.”
Lysyk did not respond to the Star's questions before deadline.