Find out which companies got money from Ontario’s pandemic tourism recovery fund | 24CA News

Airlines, breweries and film theatre chains had been among the many largest recipients of $100 million in Ontario taxpayer funding designed to compensate the tourism trade for pandemic losses, 24CA News has realized. 

Premier Doug Ford’s authorities initially declined to call the businesses that obtained funding via its Ontario Tourism Recovery Program, so 24CA News obtained the record via a freedom of knowledge request. 

The record reveals that the utmost grant of practically $700,000 every went to Air Canada, WestJet and Porter Airlines, in addition to a brewery, a vineyard and firms that personal lodges however whose essential business is development or actual property.

The Ford authorities had introduced the fund in 2021 to supply grants to tourism companies whose revenues plunged because of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The program paperwork stated the cash was for “Ontario-based, tourism businesses in the for-profit attractions and accommodations sectors that have been hardest hit by COVID-19 … private sector tourism businesses that are significant drivers to their regional tourism economies.” 

The grants totalling $99.5 million went to 571 corporations, in response to info launched to 24CA News via a freedom of knowledge request to the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport.

The most grant was $695,000. That went to 55 corporations, the majority of them lodge operators, in addition to airways, transport corporations, and the operators of high-profile tourism points of interest, reminiscent of Canada’s Wonderland and African Lion Safari. 

Some of the businesses that obtained $695,000 every: 

• Amsterdam Brewing Corp. 
• Andrew Peller Ltd. 
• Cineplex Inc. 
• Gillin Engineering and Construction Ltd.
• Kingsett Real Estate Growth LP No 5. 
• Landmark Cinemas Holding Ltd. 
• Morguard Corp.

A spokesperson for Tourism Minister Neil Lumsden stated companies that provided customer experiences, excursions, info classes and demonstrations had been eligible for the funding. 

“The Ontario Tourism Recovery Program has significantly supported employers across Ontario with a proven track record of attracting visitors and generating tourist spending,” stated Lumsden’s press secretary Alan Sakach in an e mail to 24CA News. 

“This program was one of many supports to ensure tourism in Ontario continues to be a key driver for the province’s economy,” he stated. 

Nearly half of the tourism restoration program’s whole funding went to the 68 corporations that obtained grants of greater than $500,000 every. Restaurants weren’t eligible to use.

Sakach stated the federal government offered greater than $3 billion in helps for Ontario small companies — together with eating places and the tourism sector — all through the pandemic.

Christopher Bloore, president and CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of Ontario, stated companies had been grateful that they might put the provincial cash instantly towards mitigating losses and overlaying operational prices, one thing they might not do with the federal tourism aid fund. 

However, the tempo of the funding was a problem. “There was frustration at how slowly the money came out to the front line,” stated Bloore in an interview.

The authorities created the fund as a part of its March 2021 funds, opened purposes in October of that 12 months and gave companies a deadline of November to use. 

Although authorities officers stated that the cash would begin flowing inside weeks of the applying deadline, 24CA News revealed that not one of the grants had been paid by late March of 2022. That was greater than two years after the pandemic hit Ontario and companies had been first compelled to close down. 

Tourism corporations started receiving the provincial funds final April.

Grape Escape Wine Tours was amongst them, getting $80,000 from the fund over two instalments. One of its co-owners, Richard Mell, stated in an interview that the timing felt a bit late. 

“Earlier would have helped to avoid certain loans that we had to take,” Mell stated. “Earlier would have been nice, and obviously a little bit more money would have been nice too.” 

Grape Escape has provided wine excursions in and round Niagara-on-the-Lake for the previous 15 years, each in automobiles and on bicycles. The business took an enormous hit through the lockdowns of spring and early summer season of 2020, stated Mell. 

“It’s been playing catch up ever since,” he stated. “When we were allowed to open with capacity limits, we were filling up to those limits, but not to our regular capacity that we would usually see.”

While Mell stated he would not begrudge public cash going to giant companies such because the airways, he stated he would have most well-liked the federal government to focus this funding on smaller tourism operators and cope with massive companies otherwise. 

More than 70 per cent of the companies that obtained grants got $100,000 or much less. 

Here is the complete record of corporations that obtained grants from Ontario’s Tourism Recovery Program. The record was obtained by 24CA News via a freedom of knowledge request.