By Doug Draper
A provincial NDP representative from the Welland, Ontario riding wants to know what happened to $900,000 of taxpayers money given to a food-packaging company that has suddenly closed its doors to more than 120 workers in the region after going into receivership.
This sign went up on a farm in north St. Catharines after the last fruit processing plant closed to employees and fruit growers on the same Niagara site more than three years ago
The NDP member, Cindy Forster demanded to know what happened to the money the province’s Liberal government gave to New Food Classics, an Alberta company that relocated to an abandoned canning plant in Niagara-on-the-Lake two years ago, during question period at Queen’s Park this February 27.
“In 2010, this government promised a million dollars in a grant to New Food Classics in Niagara, a packaged foods company which would create more jobs in the region of Niagara,” said Forster. “But last week this company once again went into receivership and locked its workers out. When the government handed this money out, did it extract any job guarantees?”
Forster went on to ask Ted McKeekin, the province’s minister of government services, to answer the question Kate Jones, a New Food Classics employee and a unit plant chair for the United Food and Commercial Workers union recently asked – ‘Where did that money go?’
McKeekin responded this way; “We were very, very pleased, as a government, to help New Food Classics. They were a Calgary company that had an idea, a good idea, that they wanted to invest in Ontario,” he said. “I don’t know if the member opposite knows this, but there is a process that’s in place to review applications and to do due diligence. The company provided their information in good faith, and we did the due diligence analysis in good faith. And as fate would have it, sometimes these things don’t work out.”
The minister pointed out that New Food Classics replaced CanGro, a fruit-canning factory he said went “bankrupt” at the same location about three years ago. He added that the province is talking to the company to see if there is some way it can help it re-open or, failing that, the government will try and find a successor.
When CanGro closed shop, there were also stories that it moved its operations to China or somewhere else in the Far East where it could process and can fruit products cheaper. The closing of the plant – a major market for a number of Niagara, Ontario area fruitgrowers – led to more than a few farmers giving up and pulling out their fruit orchards due to the loss of CanGro as a buyer for their produce.
It remains to be seen what impact the New Foord Classics closing could have on area farmers.
(Niagara At Large invites our readers to tell us what you think on this issue. You can share your views in the comment boxes below, and please remember that NAL only posts comments by individuals who attach their real first and last names to them.)
Niagara At Large 
Private profits, public losses.
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Always the same assumption — when in reality sometimes for many different reasons businesses actually lose money – when you have no facts you should not make assumptions :
Remember if no one made a profit no one would have a job or an income – is that what you want???
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The money went down the rabbit hole like it seems all of our tax cuts given to these same kinds of companies. I was almost pleased to see this new company take over the CanGro plant, but this was too good to be true … as always, for this region.
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The list of companies that have closed their doors after receiving huge grants Provincial and Federal is like an obituary list in as much as it seems to be growing like weeds in our gardens “Never Ending”
Our politicians hired a number of consulting firms over the years to tell us “To attract intelligent peoples to run for office as MPPs and MPs or staffing CEOs we have to pay them salaries and perks equivalent to what is paid in the private sector” …..SO BE IT????
Then we find these same “so called” intellectual assets hiring more and more consulting firms to do what they are being paid handsomely to do??? Think, Plan and perform…..It must be a fact one of the fastest growing “CORPORATE ENTITIES” today is the consulting CORPORATIONS and we see it daily in our Municipal and Regional and Provincial Governments.
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NAFTA
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I believe New Food Classics took over the Pinty’s processing plant two years ago not the CanGro plant.
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