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British Columbia’s auditor general says COVID recovery grants given out to hard-hit tourism industry met most of the government’s required guidelines, however a few minor gaps and inconsistencies were spotted.
On Tuesday, Michael Pickup explained that BC’s $41-million COVID economic aid program was created by the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture, and Sport after the tourism sector experienced a loss of 64% of tourism-related jobs.
Pickup did identify minor issues in the evaluation process and that some successful applications were missing details on why the government approved the application.
Grants for small-scale infrastructure projects totalled $41.4 million and went to 106 local governments, community organizations and First Nations in 2020 and 2021.
Pickup does acknowledge that the government launched the program within a compressed time frame, which raised the risk of inconsistent application reviews.
In his report, Pickup said 12 projects had various issues such as lower scores, few jobs created or unclear start dates.
However, he said the other 94 of the approved projects met all evaluation criteria.
"Government guidelines tell ministries what they need to do when they are setting up grant programs," auditor general Michael Pickup said.
"Here, the ministry met most of those standards; however, it could improve its evaluation and monitoring processes."
In addition, there were issues related to the timeliness of reporting meaning that the ministry did not always have the most up-to-date information, a release added.
Pickup’s final report made four recommendations for the ministry, including:
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Ensuring all aspects of the valuation process are well defined
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Establishing expectations to ensure staff document their rationale for evaluation and funding decisions
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Defining a due diligence process to ensure all funding recipients meet the funding program’s objectives
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Improving the monitoring strategy to make sure it receives timely reports from recipients to ensure they are complying with the grant requirements
The Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture, and Sport agreed with and accepted the auditor general's recommendations.
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