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“Sandvine, like any global high-tech company, has to choose the best regions to do our development work,” he said Friday by email. “Our natural predisposition is to do that work in Ontario, but there are other parts of the world where Sandvine currently operates that also have qualified candidates and much lower cost. The Jobs and Prosperity Fund took a difficult decision about where to locate future jobs and helped gap some of the cost difference, but not all of it.”

The provincial government agrees with that take. “If the province was not able to support Sandvine’s growth in Ontario, it’s highly likely that further expansion would have taken place at Sandvine’s India-based facilities,” says Jessica Hume, a spokesperson for Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid. “We are securing Sandvine’s presence in Ontario and providing support for the company’s continued economic contribution to the province.”

Indeed, the company’s “robust financial health” is what makes it such a good recipient, Hume says. We know they’ll be able to do what they say they’ll do.

The Sandvine deal takes a winning company and plies it with more money.

Also, this money from the province is unrelated to the dividend money, Wadsworth says: “The province’s contribution to the project is directly linked to Sandvine’s spending on eligible costs incurred on this project. It is completely separate from the funding source used for the payment of a dividend.”

The money you use to pay the rent is completely separate from the money you use for groceries, right? You make the rent money on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the grocery money on Wednesdays.

The Sandvine deal, like so many of the other jobs-and-prosperity subsidies before it — for Ubisoft, Cisco, OpenText, Ford, Honda and so on — takes a winning company and plies it with more money. We will probably have to keep plying, too. Sandvine got a $25-million boost from Ontario in 2010 and here we are again.

This is the best possible outcome, the subsidy system working up to its full potential. Hooray for success.

Postmedia News

dreevely@postmedia.com

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