Despite the subsidies originally aiming to alleviate the strains of small businesses, large corporations have received a substantial amount of money. Saputo, for example, received the $7 million grant despite the company posting $13.5 billion in revenues in 2018, which allowed the company to pay its shareholders $254.6 in dividends.
The agricultural minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has previously praised the fund as helping out “family-run enterprise.” In reality, according to documents obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter, the big recipients have been major corporate operations: Nestle ($958,382); Chapman’s Ice Cream ($1.1 million); Quality Cheese Inc. ($1.3 million), Arla Foods Inc. ($1.4 million), La Fromagerie Coopérative St-Albert Inc. ($1.5 million), Silani Sweet Cheese Ltd. ($1.7 million), Skotidakis Goat Farm of Eugene ($1.7 million), Smucker Foods of Canada Corp.($1.9 million), COWS Inc. ($1.9 million), Bothwell Cheese Inc. ($1.9 million), La Trappe à Fromage ($3.1 million), Fromagerie Bergeron Inc. ($4 million), Amalgamated Dairies Ltd. ($4.4 million), MDI Holdings Corp. ($5 million), and Gay Lea Foods Co-operative Ltd. ($6.9 million).
