OTTAWA: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) today claimed a victory on the "transparency front" in its battle to end Corporate Welfare. Recent activity on the Industry Canada web site reveals a departmental effort to counteract the effects of the CTF's research on corporate welfare earlier this year.

"It's clear that we shook the department," said CTF Federal Director Walter Robinson. "It took the Minister eight months to respond. The fact that they have posted a repayment page on their web site is a clear indication of damage control." The DIPP/TPC repayment page (http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/SSG/ad03358e.html) as yet contains no data and was last updated on September 25th.

This past spring the CTF published a two-volume Corporate Welfare study which found that Industry Canada doled out over $11 billion of assistance from 1982 to 1997. Over 50% of this assistance went to 75 select companies and almost 20% of this assistance was earmarked for 5 companies, mainly in the Canadian aerospace sector. As of last fall, the department had collected a mere 15% of an outstanding $3.2 billion in loans. Included in this amount is $2.1 billion in outstanding loans made under the old Defence Industry Productivity Program (DIPP). The CTF also revealed that the feds continue to give money to many of the former DIPP recipients under the new Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) program.

"If the government is really committed to transparency, it will immediately post year by year, company by company repayment records for the old DIPP program and repayment forecasts on a year by year, company by company basis for the TPC program," added Robinson. "We challenged the Minister to follow this course last spring and he has not. What is the department hiding "

"We will continue to pressure for real transparency. We will not accept the use of this page as a propaganda tool for digital photo-ops of sporadic cheque handovers to the feds," Robinson stated. "We continue to demand disclosure from the department and will publish new studies early next year. Our goal remains the same, to put an end to corporate welfare, " concluded Robinson.