At least $226 million in provincial COVID-19 relief money went to businesses who were not eligible to receive, and almost none of it has been paid back or ever will be, Ontario’s auditor general found.

Payments from two provincial programs – $210 million from the Small Business Support Grant and $16 million from the Property Tax and Energy Cost Rebate program, went to nearly 17,500 business applicants who were actually not eligible to receive any payment.

Under the Small Business Support Grant, businesses that experienced significant revenue losses due to COVID-19 lockdowns between late 2020 and early 2021 could apply to receive up to $40,000 in non-repayable assistance in two rounds of payments.

More than 111,000 businesses received payments under the program, eventually costing the province $2.96 billion.

Of those, 14,500 recipients were not actually eligible, receiving an average of $14,483 each.

Other recipients technically qualified because they incurred a loss, but received far more money than they lost.

"For example, some recipients reported that they lost as little as $0.02 or experienced no change a tall in their revenues, yet received $10,000," the report said.

Approximately $714 million was paid out to businesses that received more assistance than the losses they actually reported.

Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk told reporters it was possible there were even more businesses that received money when they shouldn't have.

"Is there a chance that there are maybe a few more out there, yes, but I think they’ve captured most of it," she said.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford says some amount of funding going where it shouldn’t have was inevitable, given the circumstances of COVID-19.

“I call it being dishonest - when you know you’re under a category, and you switch things up a little bit, again when you’re handing out $3.3 billion, you’re going to see things like this happen.

Reasons for ineligibility could have ranged from having a business or mailing address outside of Ontario, to having a Canada Revenue Agency number only set up in 2021, to having the same address or banking information as another business that already applied for a grant.

“We always have to be accountable, and we’ll make sure people are accountable and we’ll be accountable as well,” Ford said.

All of that money has since been written off.

Auditors said that when they asked why the amounts were written off, the Economic Development Ministry said “The Priorities and Planning Committee of the Cabinet recommended that the Ministry not pursue recovery of these amounts ‘due to the exceptional circumstances caused by COVID-19’.”

Auditors also found provincial ministries relied almost entirely on self-reported data from businesses to assess whether they were eligible for the grants.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath called Ford’s relief programs “half-baked.”

“Why did the Ford government choose not to put any oversight in place to make sure grants went into helping small businesses keep their doors open and staff employed,” she said. “Why did he write off that money instead of getting back funds that belong to Ontarians?”

The Property Tax and Energy Cost Rebate program paid businesses the entirety of the municipal property tax and energy costs paid during times over the past two years where they were required to close or significantly scale back operations due to COVID-19 lockdowns.

The Auditor General’s staff found 3,065 businesses received more than $16 million when they were not eligible.

Since then, about $850,000 has been paid back.

The total budget for the program was about $905 million.