This is just the tip of the grants iceberg.

These have always been a sham and a tool for control, on every level of government. On my other website, KlueIQ, I have written quite a bit about this shell game. You can read it here and here. Any entrepreneur who thinks they can get a government grant without having any connections is naive, and of those who do, the funding structure is devious: there is always going to be a shortfall, and more and more, recipients either have to take “classes” or sit in meetings with multiple public service employees who are getting paid just to sit there and do nothing.

Or, they are pushed into hiring a “mentor” with the understanding that a significant portion of their grant money has to go to paying the parasite, while the struggling business has even less money to put into tech, inventory, and labor.

Don’t try to write to your elected representative to get answers. They don’t answer emails. I wrote to 11 to ask for a meeting. Zero came through. You can read about my experiment here.

These grants are rigged. They never give you specific, data-driven reasons for the rejection, if they inform you at all. They never state who got them or why. And often, you cannot just apply for a grant: you need some sort of case manager, go to classes set up by some third-party who gets paid by the government (and not always online — you have to waste your gas and time driving there weekly), and even then, you don’t just get the grant: you have pitch your idea, meaning after all those “classes”, you’re not going to get that financial lifeline.

But there are grifters who get millions in taxpayer dollars and have nothing to show for it. They don’t do anything. They produce nothing, but they get millions while small business owners, who are providing a genuine product or service, can’t get a $5000 grant. They go to interviews. They go to webinars (some which cost $25 to attend). They go to sketchy classes. They go to pitch presentations. And then…nothing.

We don’t have forensic auditors looking at the books or the cronyism. We have no checks and balances. These programs have so many well-paid civil servants getting on the Sunshine List that it costs more to run the program than there is grant money. So when you hear that a government earmarked $X to a grant, know that all but a few pennies actually go to giving people grants.

This is the most inefficient way of helping businesses, but a very efficient way for the public service sector to get a cushy job with little work where they can throw money at certain sanctioned players. This is not a way to help businesses here, especially now when they are struggling because of tariffs and a changing AI-driven landscape. The point is to keep people down and scared. They are easier to control, and if they think they might get a lifeline, they will keep quiet, hoping against hope that if they are compliant and suffer in silence, maybe the next time, it’s their turn.

Don’t count on it. Nothing will change until people say “enough.”

All that will happen is that grifters will get richer taking taxpayer money and living the highlife, while you struggle to pay basic bills.

This goes on with both Left and Right-leaning governments on the municipal, provincial, and federal level. If one level can get away with it, then the others take notes and do the same.

And Canadian small businesses deserve better than that.