I think one of the first things is to make very clear what the criteria will be for awarding the money. I know there was a competition that went on, although it was amazing how it was regionally distributed across Canada in the end, which kind of asks the question whether the criteria included a regional factor behind where the money was going to be spent.
That has to be done. I think you also need to have more of a separate board or a separate Crown corporation or whatever that would be less influenced by the funding. The criticism of the ACOA—the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency—over the years was that it was very much politically driven. In fact, a paper that was done by Michael Smart showed that a lot of the money went to the constituencies of the government that was in power at that time. They tended to get more of the money. Obviously, that is not a process that's going to work very well.
Again, there was a lot of criticism of ACOA that the money wasn't necessarily being used for innovation and supporting innovation. There is an argument for being part of an innovation ecosystem to do that sort of thing. Instead, it was money that was being used to fund another little craft company that, frankly, wouldn't do that much for economic growth in Atlantic Canada.
If one is running these strategic funds, I do think it can be done in a way that takes the decision-making out of the hands of the politicians. If that's not done, it's always going to be a problem. That's where I would go with it.
I want to add one other thing. We keep talking about some of the good things here around the table, as our colleagues here are at this table, but there are a lot of subsidies that aren't working and aren't good, and we don't have anyone here to talk about those.
In fact, that's why I mentioned this EY study. I think it would be worth it for you to get it, because you have to sit back and ask questions like whether we should be funding some of the stuff that we're doing, like refrigerators at Loblaws.
It's not to say that all business subsidies are bad. It's to say that some are good, particularly if they have huge innovation benefits, because that's where the economic argument is, but there are a lot of bad subsidies out there. Those are the ones that could do a lot of harm to the economy. Not only do they themselves hurt the economy, but the funding that goes into them hurts the economy because either the taxation for them has an economic cost or the money is taken from other important government expenditures that could have very important positive benefits.
That's why I'm particularly very concerned about the size of all these business subsidies. I can bet you that Phil's.... Was it $18 billion you mentioned from your estimate? It is hard to get an estimate of it. I tried myself and didn't see one that I liked very much. Of the $18 billion, I can bet you that not all $18 billion are worthy subsidies.