The Parliamentary Budget Officer, Yves Giroux, is asking the cabinet to provide the details of its multi-billion dollar subsidy agreements with Volkswagen (VW) and Stellantis by the end of the month. .“I often require information held by government departments and Crown corporations and I am entitled to free and timely access,” Giroux wrote in a July 17 letter to Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne..“Providing timely and effective analysis to the Senate and House of Commons and promoting greater budget transparency and accountability are the Budget Office’s primary objectives,” wrote Giroux. .“The degree to which this is possible depends to a large extent on free and timely access to quality information held by government departments.”.According to Blacklock’s Reporter, the cabinet has approved approximately $31 billion in subsidies for three electric car battery factories in Ontario. However, the details of these contracts have yet to be made available to the public. .The agreement with Volkswagen was only revealed to MPs during a confidential hearing of the Commons Industry committee..Budget Officer Giroux, in a separate letter to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, also sought data regarding the “annual fiscal forecast of the production incentive” used as the basis for subsidies to both VW and Stellantis plants at Windsor, Brampton and St. Thomas, ON, and the “assumptions used for the fiscal forecast.”.Freeland earlier told reporters the cabinet had no choice but to award the subsidies, the largest ever issued for three factories. “Canada had to be at the table,” Freeland said on June 14. .“We were just not, as a government, going to tolerate a situation in which investment was sucked out of Canada, sucked to south of the border, and I don’t think Canadian workers should tolerate that situation.”.According to a report from the Budget Office on June 14, the government misrepresented the cost of the Volkswagen contract. They said that the estimated federal aid would be around $13.7 billion..“The Budget Office estimates the government’s financial commitment to Volkswagen will total around $16.3 billion over the period of the agreement,” said the report Fiscal Analysis of Canada’s Support for Volkswagen’s Electric Vehicle Battery Manufacturing Plant. .“This includes an estimated $12.8 billion in production support.”.The department of Industry calculated that, on average, all the corporations in the country receive about $5.5 billion in federal aid every year. This amount is one-third of the subsidies given specifically to the Volkswagen factory..“We’re winning,” Industry Minister Champagne told reporters on June 7. .“We’re in the big leagues. We land these mandates. Stellantis will get done, Volkswagen has been done, and others are looking. So it’s creating momentum for all sorts of investments to come to Canada.”
