A $50-million lifeline the Harper government threw to ailing shipyards in 2007 lacked basic record-keeping, raising questions about the management of Canada's national shipbuilding program.The so-called Structured Financing Facility, a fund designed to keep shipyards on life support until this year, lacked any "rigorous" reporting on how well the money was spent, says an internal evaluation.
Bureaucrats did not properly monitor the eight ship projects that received millions in federal subsidies, leaving no record of basic information such as the number of jobs created.
"Quantitative information, e.g., actual number of person years employed on projects, was not completed," says an evaluation commissioned by Industry Canada.
"Site visits were conducted one to two months after the project began, which was far too early to capture useful information…Several impact assessment reports simply used the ones created during the application process."
The $83,000 study by consultants Goss Gilroy Inc. was completed in February but only made public after the May 2 federal election.
The fund, created in 2001, was renewed in 2007 as a bridge to help keep shipyards in business until this year, when Ottawa solicited bids to build $35 billion worth of ships for the military, coast guard and others.
The National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy, announced in June last year, hits another milestone Thursday. That's the deadline, recently extended by two weeks, for bids by shipyards to become Ottawa's favoured shipbuilders.
The amount of work in play over the next three decades is enormous: some 28 large ships, most for the navy, and more than 100 smaller vessels.
The Structured Financing Facility, in the meantime, provided taxpayer subsidies to help mitigate the 20 per cent price disadvantage Canada's shipyards typically face when bidding for projects that often gravitate to cheaper shipbuilders in South Korea and elsewhere.
Full Article
Source: CBC news
No comments:
Post a Comment