19 ms·

In Canada this is a huge scam. The government advertizes that it's funding incubators. Great, right? The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to lar

In Canada this is a huge scam. The government advertizes that it's funding incubators. Great, right? The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation. The cover is that the government doesn't know tech so it will give money to trusted partners and they will choose who to give the money to because they've been doing such a great job innovating in Canada. Surprise: they gave the money to themselves! You might have wondered why all these incubators in the crypto era were desperate to get you to go to their office. You might have also wondered: what fool is paying for this nice office in downtown Toronto where the prices are crazy-high? The taxpayer. All of that money was completely wasted and worse, little of it went to actual start ups.

franze 3mo ago
Sounds like Europe....
- cs02rm0 3mo ago
  https://www.plexal.com/our-partners/ https://www.plexal.com/our-partners/
- cubefox 3mo ago
  Yes, I remember someone explaining that a similar thing happens with all kinds of research grants in the EU. Some companies specialize in writing very complex grant proposals in just such a way that they are likely accepted, and then produce some useless bullshit reports. Actual specialized companies with expertise in the matters the grant is about don't have the knowledge of how to fill out grant proposals in a way that gets them accepted by bureaucrats because they don't know how the decision process works. Depressing.
  - timkam 3mo ago
    Indeed. Also, companies with a genuine and socially at least somewhat useful business model prefer focusing on customers buying their actual products as the main revenue source. The state- and EU-driven funding ecosystem is so convoluted that one either mostly ignores it in favor of value-creating work, or specializes in exploiting it, unfortunately.
- pbhjpbhj 3mo ago
  People want more government control, but when governments take more control the press tells the people that it's bad and the people acquiesce. In local forums, so often you see (paraphrasing a pattern) "why are the government interfering with landlords, they should stop so many barbers opening instead". That is, why are the gov interfering in property markets, instead they should interfere in property markets AND plan the economy (where economy here means 'financial system'). The people promoting planned economy without realising it are always 'right wing' 'all Communists should be shot'-types. It's fascinating.
  - Xirdus 3mo ago
    I know a lot of left win Europeans who promote planned economy without realising it. So there's that. I think a better way to look at it is people demanding the government to intervene whenever intervention is beneficial to them personally, while demanding the government leave things alone whenever intervention is detrimental to them personally. Which is just a long winded way to describe the basics of democracy - people voting in their own interest.
    - Nevermark 3mo ago
      > people voting in their own interest. There are some people who care about policy, care about a generally healthy environment. Which has a strong self-interest aspect, as it should, but not narrow. Few people manage to vote for their own narrow interests in a reliable coherent way. Even the rich and powerful reliably foot gun themselves. I believe the vast majority, the vast majority of the time, reliably and enthusiastically vote for their group's shibboleths. Regardless of what they might say or believe their own motivations are. Even seemingly sophisticated and principled thinkers. It shows via the reliable, trivial to resolve, but reflection impervious group-coded "misunderstandings" that even "serious" people defend and nurture. The group reinforced, often meme-reflex deflected, unthinkables. Across the political spectrum. People vote for brands.
      - Jensson 3mo ago
        > People vote for brands. Right, so the government should be based on brands rather than people. USA trying to make a people centric system still ended up into a brand centric republican vs democrat, just that now those brands changes dramatically every 4 years just people still vote for the brand even after it changes. Its much more stable when you have stable political party brands like in multi party system, then a person voting for the same brand for 40 years will vote for roughly the same politics instead of it changing all the time.
- elzbardico 3mo ago
  Sounds like Brazil...
- tverbeure 3mo ago
  Yeah, I used to work for a large-ish company that participated in projects like this. The company has a project manager with a large spreadsheet to keep track of everything so that no employee would accidentally be officially double booked because that could be detected as fraud. Some real work was done, but the meetings with other partners were a farce. You had these tiny companies whose only existence was to feed off the European money. One day our manager asked if the architecture document of a 100kbps modem that I had worked on could be repurposed for a 1 Mbps modem project that was European funded…
- jijijijij 3mo ago
  German here, can confirm. Although, I don't think it's honest incompetence, but intentional corruption. Eg. public calls for bids tend to be a little too specific and politicians tend to get jobs where they funneled public money. However, things are changing... As of this current government, nobody is scheming anymore. The corruption and wealth extraction happens openly. They are really testing the waters in what they can get away with. It's almost US level audacity, tho not yet as undignified. The sad part is, although people here are universally frustrated about it, they flock to the one party evidently more corrupt and incompetent than the CDU: The AfD. Honestly, despite political disagreement, all my life I considered myself lucky to live here, but for the first time it makes me sick thinking about Germany's future, working here and paying taxes. And the base motives showing as reactionary malice by my fellow citizens disgust me. It's shameful to admit, but this country is truly ill and deeply corrupt.
fidotron 3mo ago
> The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation. And the big accounting firms. It's incredible how efficiently they divert all activity and attention from the core task, and then wonder why things don't take off.
- cogman10 3mo ago
  This is the crux of why neoliberal policies don't work. Public-private partnerships are a breeding ground for corruption. The government either needs to own what it owns or completely give up and leave it to a well regulated private market. That's not to say one off contacts need to be eliminated. But when it comes to things like building and maintain roads, these private contacts end up being huge sinkholes for public funds.
  - rayiner 3mo ago
    Public-private partnerships work very well in Asia. But the government has more oversight over the private entity and a heavier hand with policing results. A big problem in the Anglosphere in particular is that the government is too focused on politics and catering to internal stakeholders and not enough on measurable results.
    - xhkkffbf 3mo ago
      I've heard horror stories about some parts of Asia. There are huge cities built because some bureaucrat wanted to build it, not because anyone wanted to live there. And the buildings are largely empty. Those are the most visible examples. That being said, there are some good examples too. And even a few good examples might be better than the partnerships in Canada.
      - dwater 3mo ago
        Let's not forget 1MDB, where $4.5B of government money was looted under the pretense of investment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1MDB_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1MDB_scandal
nathanhammond 3mo ago
If you can read it, here's the same story happening in Hong Kong, but with outright fraud on the recipients' end. https://thecollectivehk.com/%e7%a7%91%e6%8a%80%e5%88%b8%e8%aa%bf%e6%9f%a51%e6%95%b8%e6%93%9a%e5%88%86%e6%9e%9035%e8%90%ac%e5%80%8b%e9%a0%85%e7%9b%ae%e8%bf%912000%e9%a0%85%e7%9b%ae%e5%90%8c%e6%89%b9190312-5/ https://thecollectivehk.com/%e7%a7%91%e6%8a%80%e5%88%b8%e8%a...
- etothepii 3mo ago
  Some Hong Kong money definitely goes to startups. I got flights paid for to go to a pitching competition.
Scoundreller 3mo ago
Meanwhile they haven’t raised the HST/GST threshold to start collecting from the $30k in sales it was since the tax was launched in the early 90s. You know, just something that could provide a little leg up to every small business until they’re not small anymore. But no, inflation doesn’t exist!
chollida1 3mo ago
I'd never heard of this. Can you provide a link? I'd be very interested in reading about this fraud.
stellamariesays 3mo ago
[flagged]
ransom1538 3mo ago
Canada has the same GDP as Texas (well worse). It is a 2nd world economy. You are better off getting a job in El Paso.
throwitaway222 3mo ago
Governments should really get out of it's free money crap everywhere. Only people that care should be giving out money so that they can look at their investments and make sure they want to keep spending.
- kubb 3mo ago
  But all those VC projects are crap too.
- Wowfunhappy 3mo ago
  Why can't we, like, hire good people to oversee this stuff? Pay them competitive wages. If they're corrupt, prosecute the corruption. I feel like these discussions always devolve from "a government is doing a thing badly" → "governments always do things badly" → "governments should stop doing things". But governments are basically the only party that can act in the best interest of citizens rather than shareholders. So, I would much prefer "a government is doing a thing badly" → "here are ways we could fix it". This should be perfectly achievable. Of course, no bureaucracy—public or private—will ever be perfectly efficient. That doesn't mean it can't be better, or produce a net good. Also, I do think people tend to miss all the successful things governments fund, like science research.
  - Jensson 3mo ago
    > But governments are basically the only party that can act with the well being of citizens, as opposed to shareholders, in mind. Founders that hasn't gone public yet and sold out are the only ones. The government has already sold out to shareholders, at least in USA. And no its not just "hire good people", its not just "raise wages". What happens if you raise wages is that the useless people get more money, since the ones who decide who to hire are still bad at hiring, so them raising wages without hiring better people is also a form of corruption. In the end you need to do a deep cleanse to fix it, there are no easy fixes. Root out all plants from all interest groups, everyone that has been bribed via lobbyism money etc, in the entire government...
    - 3mo ago
mannanj 3mo ago
This happens in the US, too. Maybe with different drivers, though certainly money moves to people close to the problem. Now wouldn't it be interesting to dive into how old the extortion tactic of creating the problem you solve goes?
bboygravity 3mo ago
Canadian fraud is on another level. When I worked for a Dutch company my boss forced me to take a sales pitch from some Canadian startup. They claimed to have some new magic wireless electricity technology using new unreleased quantum physics principles or whatever and had actually managed to get a significant contract from some part of the Canadian government (that was the only part of the pitch that was not a lie). The website was screaming scam with: crypto AI quantum compute, etc. The sales pitch was an actual live videocall where they just told us a bunch of lies straight to our face. First and last time I ran into something so blatant. We didn't fall for it btw.

franze 3mo ago

Sounds like Europe....

cs02rm0 3mo ago
https://www.plexal.com/our-partners/ https://www.plexal.com/our-partners/
cubefox 3mo ago
Yes, I remember someone explaining that a similar thing happens with all kinds of research grants in the EU. Some companies specialize in writing very complex grant proposals in just such a way that they are likely accepted, and then produce some useless bullshit reports. Actual specialized companies with expertise in the matters the grant is about don't have the knowledge of how to fill out grant proposals in a way that gets them accepted by bureaucrats because they don't know how the decision process works. Depressing.
- timkam 3mo ago
  Indeed. Also, companies with a genuine and socially at least somewhat useful business model prefer focusing on customers buying their actual products as the main revenue source. The state- and EU-driven funding ecosystem is so convoluted that one either mostly ignores it in favor of value-creating work, or specializes in exploiting it, unfortunately.
pbhjpbhj 3mo ago
People want more government control, but when governments take more control the press tells the people that it's bad and the people acquiesce. In local forums, so often you see (paraphrasing a pattern) "why are the government interfering with landlords, they should stop so many barbers opening instead". That is, why are the gov interfering in property markets, instead they should interfere in property markets AND plan the economy (where economy here means 'financial system'). The people promoting planned economy without realising it are always 'right wing' 'all Communists should be shot'-types. It's fascinating.
- Xirdus 3mo ago
  I know a lot of left win Europeans who promote planned economy without realising it. So there's that. I think a better way to look at it is people demanding the government to intervene whenever intervention is beneficial to them personally, while demanding the government leave things alone whenever intervention is detrimental to them personally. Which is just a long winded way to describe the basics of democracy - people voting in their own interest.
  - Nevermark 3mo ago
    > people voting in their own interest. There are some people who care about policy, care about a generally healthy environment. Which has a strong self-interest aspect, as it should, but not narrow. Few people manage to vote for their own narrow interests in a reliable coherent way. Even the rich and powerful reliably foot gun themselves. I believe the vast majority, the vast majority of the time, reliably and enthusiastically vote for their group's shibboleths. Regardless of what they might say or believe their own motivations are. Even seemingly sophisticated and principled thinkers. It shows via the reliable, trivial to resolve, but reflection impervious group-coded "misunderstandings" that even "serious" people defend and nurture. The group reinforced, often meme-reflex deflected, unthinkables. Across the political spectrum. People vote for brands.
    - Jensson 3mo ago
      > People vote for brands. Right, so the government should be based on brands rather than people. USA trying to make a people centric system still ended up into a brand centric republican vs democrat, just that now those brands changes dramatically every 4 years just people still vote for the brand even after it changes. Its much more stable when you have stable political party brands like in multi party system, then a person voting for the same brand for 40 years will vote for roughly the same politics instead of it changing all the time.
elzbardico 3mo ago
Sounds like Brazil...
tverbeure 3mo ago
Yeah, I used to work for a large-ish company that participated in projects like this. The company has a project manager with a large spreadsheet to keep track of everything so that no employee would accidentally be officially double booked because that could be detected as fraud. Some real work was done, but the meetings with other partners were a farce. You had these tiny companies whose only existence was to feed off the European money. One day our manager asked if the architecture document of a 100kbps modem that I had worked on could be repurposed for a 1 Mbps modem project that was European funded…
jijijijij 3mo ago
German here, can confirm. Although, I don't think it's honest incompetence, but intentional corruption. Eg. public calls for bids tend to be a little too specific and politicians tend to get jobs where they funneled public money. However, things are changing... As of this current government, nobody is scheming anymore. The corruption and wealth extraction happens openly. They are really testing the waters in what they can get away with. It's almost US level audacity, tho not yet as undignified. The sad part is, although people here are universally frustrated about it, they flock to the one party evidently more corrupt and incompetent than the CDU: The AfD. Honestly, despite political disagreement, all my life I considered myself lucky to live here, but for the first time it makes me sick thinking about Germany's future, working here and paying taxes. And the base motives showing as reactionary malice by my fellow citizens disgust me. It's shameful to admit, but this country is truly ill and deeply corrupt.

fidotron 3mo ago

> The money doesn't go to the start ups - it all goes to large tech companies like IBM, etc, because, obviously, IBM knows about innovation. And the big accounting firms. It's incredible how efficiently they divert all activity and attention from the core task, and then wonder why things don't take off.

cogman10 3mo ago
This is the crux of why neoliberal policies don't work. Public-private partnerships are a breeding ground for corruption. The government either needs to own what it owns or completely give up and leave it to a well regulated private market. That's not to say one off contacts need to be eliminated. But when it comes to things like building and maintain roads, these private contacts end up being huge sinkholes for public funds.
- rayiner 3mo ago
  Public-private partnerships work very well in Asia. But the government has more oversight over the private entity and a heavier hand with policing results. A big problem in the Anglosphere in particular is that the government is too focused on politics and catering to internal stakeholders and not enough on measurable results.
  - xhkkffbf 3mo ago
    I've heard horror stories about some parts of Asia. There are huge cities built because some bureaucrat wanted to build it, not because anyone wanted to live there. And the buildings are largely empty. Those are the most visible examples. That being said, there are some good examples too. And even a few good examples might be better than the partnerships in Canada.
    - dwater 3mo ago
      Let's not forget 1MDB, where $4.5B of government money was looted under the pretense of investment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1MDB_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1MDB_scandal

nathanhammond 3mo ago

If you can read it, here's the same story happening in Hong Kong, but with outright fraud on the recipients' end. https://thecollectivehk.com/%e7%a7%91%e6%8a%80%e5%88%b8%e8%aa%bf%e6%9f%a51%e6%95%b8%e6%93%9a%e5%88%86%e6%9e%9035%e8%90%ac%e5%80%8b%e9%a0%85%e7%9b%ae%e8%bf%912000%e9%a0%85%e7%9b%ae%e5%90%8c%e6%89%b9190312-5/ https://thecollectivehk.com/%e7%a7%91%e6%8a%80%e5%88%b8%e8%a...

etothepii 3mo ago
Some Hong Kong money definitely goes to startups. I got flights paid for to go to a pitching competition.

Scoundreller 3mo ago

Meanwhile they haven’t raised the HST/GST threshold to start collecting from the $30k in sales it was since the tax was launched in the early 90s. You know, just something that could provide a little leg up to every small business until they’re not small anymore. But no, inflation doesn’t exist!

chollida1 3mo ago

I'd never heard of this. Can you provide a link? I'd be very interested in reading about this fraud.

stellamariesays 3mo ago

[flagged]

ransom1538 3mo ago

Canada has the same GDP as Texas (well worse). It is a 2nd world economy. You are better off getting a job in El Paso.

throwitaway222 3mo ago

Governments should really get out of it's free money crap everywhere. Only people that care should be giving out money so that they can look at their investments and make sure they want to keep spending.

kubb 3mo ago
But all those VC projects are crap too.
Wowfunhappy 3mo ago
Why can't we, like, hire good people to oversee this stuff? Pay them competitive wages. If they're corrupt, prosecute the corruption. I feel like these discussions always devolve from "a government is doing a thing badly" → "governments always do things badly" → "governments should stop doing things". But governments are basically the only party that can act in the best interest of citizens rather than shareholders. So, I would much prefer "a government is doing a thing badly" → "here are ways we could fix it". This should be perfectly achievable. Of course, no bureaucracy—public or private—will ever be perfectly efficient. That doesn't mean it can't be better, or produce a net good. Also, I do think people tend to miss all the successful things governments fund, like science research.
- Jensson 3mo ago
  > But governments are basically the only party that can act with the well being of citizens, as opposed to shareholders, in mind. Founders that hasn't gone public yet and sold out are the only ones. The government has already sold out to shareholders, at least in USA. And no its not just "hire good people", its not just "raise wages". What happens if you raise wages is that the useless people get more money, since the ones who decide who to hire are still bad at hiring, so them raising wages without hiring better people is also a form of corruption. In the end you need to do a deep cleanse to fix it, there are no easy fixes. Root out all plants from all interest groups, everyone that has been bribed via lobbyism money etc, in the entire government...
  - 3mo ago

mannanj 3mo ago

This happens in the US, too. Maybe with different drivers, though certainly money moves to people close to the problem. Now wouldn't it be interesting to dive into how old the extortion tactic of creating the problem you solve goes?

bboygravity 3mo ago

Canadian fraud is on another level. When I worked for a Dutch company my boss forced me to take a sales pitch from some Canadian startup. They claimed to have some new magic wireless electricity technology using new unreleased quantum physics principles or whatever and had actually managed to get a significant contract from some part of the Canadian government (that was the only part of the pitch that was not a lie). The website was screaming scam with: crypto AI quantum compute, etc. The sales pitch was an actual live videocall where they just told us a bunch of lies straight to our face. First and last time I ran into something so blatant. We didn't fall for it btw.