$300 million federal climate programs failed to produce new jobs, lower emissions: Report

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A report by the Department of Natural Resources says two 2018 federal climate programs that promised new jobs and lower emissions failed to provide either according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

In fact, managers “stopped collecting” data that would establish whether taxpayers received value for money for the programs that received multi-year funding to the tune of $301.38 million to subsidize power projects.

Managers “stopped collecting certain performance metrics, e.g. greenhouse gas emission reductions, throughout the project duration,” said the report.

“These metrics will only be collected in final reporting as those responsible for program delivery only expect meaningful data to be available once solutions have been fully implemented and tested. At that time, evidence suggests it will most likely be too difficult and too late to identify weaknesses or errors and make changes and corrections.”

Auditors wrote that the records made available were incomplete.

“Removing annual reporting increases the risk of poor quality performance information,” said the report.

“Documents provided by funding recipients had some gaps in actual outcomes and results. The evaluation team also observed some outcome information is not captured consistently across projects.”

Back then, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said the programs would “help build cleaner, safer, better connected electricity systems and create well-paying jobs for middle class Canadians.”

The report says neither claim was verified.

“There are areas of improvement and lessons learned,” it said.

“There are inconsistencies in how the programs collect performance information. The lack of a consistent approach in how data were reported rendered it impossible to aggregate the results and thus accurately assess the extent to which some of the indicators have been met.”

No job creation figures were projected when the programs were launched.