Question Period Note: Prairies Economic Development Canada Accomplishments

Prairies Economic Development Canada Accomplishments

• Prairies Economic Development Canada launched in August 2021 and is enhancing its presence from four to eleven service locations across the Prairies.
• Under the Regional Recovery and Relief Fund, launched in 2020, the department (and its predecessor Western Economic Diversification Canada) delivered more than $718 million in relief funding to 10,000 businesses and organizations.
• Through Budget 2021, the department also launched five new programs that will deliver $360 million over three years to support economic recovery while completing the delivery of relief programming.
• In the past fiscal year, to support economic recovery and growth, PrairiesCan allocated $460 million to 1260 projects expected to create 9,621 jobs and maintain 18,823 existing jobs.

Regional Relief and Recovery Fund (RRRF)
• The RRRF was an urgent relief program that targeted businesses and organizations that did not qualify for other pandemic support programs.

• It launched with almost one billion dollars for regions across the country, and was recapitalized twice to a total value of over two billion dollars to deal with an unprecedented need.

• This was emergency funding, to help eligible businesses pay their bills and pay their employees at a time when their revenues were significantly reduced.

• From conception to delivery, RRRF took less than seven weeks to stand-up.

Budget 2021 Programming
• The pandemic relief programs from Budget 2021 that PrairiesCan is delivering are:
o the Tourism Relief Fund;
o the Jobs and Growth Fund;
o the Canada Community Revitalization Fund;
o Major Festivals and Events Support Initiative; and
o the Aerospace Regional Recovery Initiative.
Core Programs
• Over the past fiscal year, PrairiesCan continued to invest in key sectors with significant economic potential, including:
o health and biological sciences;
o digital technologies;
o value-added agriculture; and,
o clean technology.

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