Although subsidies helped Investissement Québec (IQ) meet its goals last year, employees at the state-owned company have not multiplied their interventions with companies to boost their bonuses, an executive assured Tuesday.
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“Our goal is not just to do as much as possible [d’interventions subventionnaires] to get compensation. [Les subventions]having someone sit in a chair has such a limited impact on incentive pay [à IQ]he doesn’t have to think, “I’m going to start taking all the money from the government.” […] put together a packet of attachments [d’entreprises], it will increase my bonus.” That’s not the goal. We have quality control and our goal is to be relevant,” said Christian Settano, senior vice president of finance, risk management and information technology.
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Christian Settano, First Vice President of Investissement Québec.
On Tuesday, Le Journal announced that the government has awarded more than $90 million in subsidies to some 500 companies in 2022 to help them grow sales outside of Quebec. In just under nine months, almost half of the five-year budget for the program in question was spent, forcing Quebec to suspend it.
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More subsidies, more exports
The subsidies helped improve IQ’s export statistics.
In 2022-2023, IQ expects the company to have enabled $3.1 billion in sales outside of Quebec, compared to $2 billion last year. Of those exports, $1.1 million resulted “from financial assistance” [subventions] in 2022-2023, according to IQ’s latest annual report. The comparable figure was $528 million in 2021-2022.
This means that subsidies contributed 52% of the export increase attributed to IQ over the period 2022-2023.
“Our people don’t make the connection between ‘OK, I’ll do more volume, I’ll get more bonuses.’ Today we do not notice this behavior”, stressed Mr. Settano.
“I’m not worried about that. [d’observer un] Behavior could be described as perverted [de la part d’un] Employees. [De dire] Overall, we call on the government to be able to approve a larger amount [de subventions] to make more contributions [aux entreprises] so we have more volume,” he concluded.