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These programs have created 12,298 new jobs, according to ministry data, and helped retain 59,289, up until the end of March 2015. Over the course of all the subsidy contracts that number should rise over 100,000.

Lysyk notes drastically varying costs per job: $718 to $16,981 per post retained or created.

Once the terms of those deals expire — usually five years — there’s no follow-up tracking. The report notes that means the ministry “has no information on whether jobs created or retained are long-lasting.”

And the lack of transparency in the selection process for these government handouts could leave small- and medium-sized businesses out in the cold.

“While 40 per cent of the number of projects funded by the ministry related to existing small-and medium-sized businesses, the dollar value of that support amounted to less than four per cent of its total funding,” the report states. “No support went to new start-ups and projects were limited to certain areas of the province.”

There’s also a lack of co-ordination, with Lysyk noting another nine ministries payout an additional $1.8 billion in corporate welfare, again without proper tracking of its long-term efficacy or consideration for possible duplication.

And the government has routinely re-announced the same money under different names — touting as much as $1 billion in investments that had previously been identified.

“Over the last 10 years and as recently as January 2015, the government publicly announced almost $1 billion more of economic-development and employment-support funding projects by re-announcing the same available funding under different funding programs,” the report states. It notes the Jobs and Prosperity Fund announced last January, a $2.5 billion ten-year program, included $780 million in programs that had already been announced.