The Quebec economy is strong but is punching below “its demographic weight”, suffering from labour shortages and is behind the national average when it comes productivity and market diversification, according to the briefing binder provided to the minister for the federal economic development agency in Quebec as she took office last October.
Pascal St-Onge, a first-time MP from the Quebec riding of Brome—Missisquoi, was named to Justin Trudeau’s cabinet in October and given responsibility for two portfolios, as the Minister of Sport and as the Minister for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec.
Last week, The Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec — often referred to simply as CED — published the 24-page transition binder it gave to St-Onge when she was sworn in on Oct. 26.
In it, the bureaucrats who prepared the binder last fall identified some economic challenges unique to Quebec. St-Onge was told, for example, that Quebec’s economy was “currently strong but still below its demographic weight.” Quebec is home to 22.5 per cent of Canada’s population but accounts for 19.1 per cent of the county’s total economic output and 17.5 per cent of all of Canada’s international exports.
St-Onge was also told that CED believes Quebec is “behind in investments, productivity, entrepreneurship and market diversification,” the implication being that St-Onge may wish to focus the agency’s attention on those issues.
St-Onge’s mandate letter from the prime minister is relatively vague and broad instructing her only that she “continue to promote short- and long-term job creation and economic development in the regions of Quebec, particularly through the delivery of regionally tailored programs, services, knowledge and expertise.”
Like all the seven federal regional economic development agencies, CED’s main method of contributing to economic growth is providing taxpayer-funded loans or grants to businesses and organizations.
The agency said in the transition binder that, for the five-year period ending March 31, 2021, it had approved an average of 443 such loans or grants each year. Approved projects received an average of $224,000 in financial assistance and 69 per cent of projects involved handing out repayable contributions. The briefing binder did not indicate repayment rates or how much of its loan portfolio was at risk.
CED also claimed that for every $1 it invested in a given organization, another $5.65 was invested by other sources. It also claimed to have helped create or maintain 20,986 jobs in Quebec.
CED will receive around $650 million in federal funding this year and the 390 people it employs at its Montreal head office and in 12 regional offices are mostly tasked with handing out most of that money to eligible organizations.
So far in this Parliament, CED under St-Onge has remained relatively quiet with just four funding announcements worth a combined $4 million. Those include providing loans of $134,900 to a Baie-Comeau brewery and $378,073 to a Maricourt manufacturer.
By contrast, St-Onge’s predecessor as CED minister, Mélanie Joly, had signed off on $11 million worth of grants and contributions for 15 projects by this point in the previous Parliament.
CED under Joly would go on to authorize 658 spending commitments worth a combined $631 million during the 23-month life of the 43rd Parliament.
Transition binders or briefing binders are normally provided to all ministers upon taking office. They can often run to hundreds of pages and are prepared by bureaucrats to give a new minister some basic information on everything from where the washrooms are at ministerial headquarters to a list of external stakeholders the minister should meet to a list of the top issues of the day. Such transition binders were normally accessible only through an Access to Information request but the Trudeau government, upon taking office in 2015, began proactively publishing some transition binders.
CED became the first department to proactively publish its ministerial transition binder when it released it on Jan. 19 through the federal government’s “Open Government” data portal. It is the only department that has, so far, published its ministerial transition binder through the portal.
CED is one of seven regional economic development agencies. After last year’s federal election, the Trudeau government split what was known as Western Economic Diversification Canada — the regional agency for B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — into two new agencies: Pacific Economic Development Canada (PacifiCan) for BC and Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Each of the seven agencies has its own minister. Combined, the regional economic development agencies receive about $2 billion a year out of the federal treasury.
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