Nine years after a multi billion dollar bailout of Chrysler, the Ontario provincial government has written off $445 million in debt owed by the automaker.

The $445 million writeoff, approved in late June and announced quietly July 5, comes more than a year after the federal government wrote off its $2.6-billion share of the rescue package. It was something the province effectively had no choice in, said Emily Hogeveen, a spokesperson for provincial finance minister Rod Phillips.

“Given the structure of the loan, once the federal government made the decision to write off their portion, there was no legal recourse for Ontario to further recover funds,” said Hogeveen in a written statement.

Even if the federal government hadn’t written off its share, Ontario wouldn’t have been able to recover the money because the original company declared bankruptcy in 2009. It was eventually succeeded by the merged Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in 2014. Fiat Chrysler had a net profit of 3.6 billion Euros, or $5.3 billion in 2018.

Hogeveen said the writeoff won’t affect the province’s spending plans, as it was effectively a formality.

“This decision has no impact on our fiscal plan, as this debt was accounted for in the years following nonpayment,” Hogeveen said.

Fiat-Chrysler spokesperson Lou Ann Gosselin said the current company, FCA Canada, doesn’t owe anything.

“In 2009, federal and provincial government bridge loans were offered to help the Company restructure. In 2011, FCA Canada repaid all outstanding government loans that were due in full, with interest, 6 years ahead of schedule,” said Gosselin.

In 2011, then-federal finance minister Jim Flaherty praised Fiat-Chrysler for paying $1.7 billion in loans and interest to the federal and provincial governments, but made clear full recovery was unlikely.

“Let’s be clear that at the end of the day, there’s not going to be a full recovery of the taxpayers’ investments that were made back in 2008 and 2009 in the sense of tax recovery,” Flaherty said at the time.