[Traum]

On a different note, who would you say deserves the bigger blame in something like this? The federal gov for its incompetence? or the businesses for their greed?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cra...ints-1.5991108

The Canada Revenue Agency has received nearly 1,200 complaints about companies allegedly misusing federal support money designed to protect jobs during the pandemic, CBC News has learned.

Despite repeated threats from the federal finance minister's office to come down hard on companies with large fines and even imprisonment of executives for misusing the Canada emergency wage subsidy (CEWS), the CRA hasn't penalized a single company.

Critics say that's in part because the CEWS program doesn't expressly restrict how companies manage the profits that might result from receiving federal support for wages, so long as the government money was used for that purpose.

Yellow Pages, for instance, the phone book turned digital marketing company, collected $7.3 million in CEWS funds in 2020. It also paid out $8.8 million in dividends, the first such payment to its shareholders in several years. Between August and December, the company also bought back $3.3 million worth of its own stock.

TFI International, a Montreal-based shipping and logistics company with more than 16,000 employees across North America, hiked its dividend twice in 2020, paying out more than $67 million to shareholders while also receiving $52.3 million in CEWS.

High Liner Foods received $3.4 million in CEWS and increased its dividend by 40 per cent citing "improving free cash flow." High Liner Foods paid out a total of $5,518,000 in dividends in 2020.