INNOVATION FUND IS POLITICALLY INFLUENCED

  There was a familiar ring to the announcement made by Natural Resources Minister Amarjeet Sohi in Calgary on Dec. 18, when he promised $1.6 billion in funding for the battered oil and gas sector.
   Among the loans and grants on offer was $100 million for “energy and economic diversification-related projects.” The source? The Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), a pool of money set aside by Ottawa in 2017 to “spur innovation for a better Canada,” according to its website. Just a few months earlier, SIF was used to provide as much as $250 million to steel and aluminum companies hammered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs.
   Other investments under the fund include $110 million for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada to modernize the plants where it manufactures its RAV4 model, and $3.4 million for a numbered company, based in Nanaimo, British Columbia, to convert a Boeing 737 jet into an aircraft used to fight forest fires. So far, the government has spent $845 million on 32 projects, according to a public database.