安省审计长谢莉·斯彭斯（Shelley Spence）本周义正言辞的声明：省政府13亿加元的“技能发展基金”（Skills Development Fund）在运作上既不公平、也不透明，更谈不上负责任。
Ontario’s Auditor-General Shelley Spence delivered a damning verdict this week: the province’s $1.3-billion Skills Development Fund has not been run in a fair, transparent, or accountable way.
审计报告显示，由安省劳工厅办公室批准的基金申请公司中，有一半以上，即总额高达7.42亿加元的拨款是在该厅专业人员的评估中被打为“差”“低”或“中等”的公司。与此同时，670份评分较高的公司申请却没有获得资助批准。而在那些“低分”却幸运中选的申请者中，许多人雇用了说客，直接游说部长办公室以期获得资金分配。
Her report revealed that more than half of the applications chosen by the Minister of Labour’s office — worth $742 million in grants — were ranked “poor,” “low,” or “medium” by the ministry’s own staff evaluators. Meanwhile, 670 high-scoring applications were left unfunded. Many of the lucky “low-ranked” winners had hired lobbyists to plead their case directly to the minister’s office.
对于一个将该基金称为“有史以来最伟大基金项目之一”的安省政府来说，这种情况令人非常不安，它让人明显感到本应用于资助安省劳动力市场的公共资金，在分配过程中却带上了政治偏袒的色彩。
For a government that calls the fund “one of the greatest programs we’ve ever created,” this is troubling. It raises the appearance of political favoritism in distributing public money that was supposed to build Ontario’s workforce.
但对于那些生活在安省多年的人士来说，这类丑闻似曾相识，并不陌生。
Yet for long-time Ontarians, this all feels disturbingly familiar.
十五年前，时称为“培训、学院及大学教育厅”（Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities）的安省机构推出了“第二职业”（Second Career）计划。该计划于2008年启动，旨在帮助在全球经济衰退中失业的雇员接受培训以再就业。和今天的基金一样，“第二职业”计划诞生于经济危机之中，但也同样很快因丑闻而声誉受损。
Fifteen years ago, the province’s training ministry — then called the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities — ran the Second Career program, launched in 2008 to help laid-off workers retrain during the global recession. Like today’s fund, Second Career was born from a crisis, and like today’s fund, it was quickly undermined by scandal.
当时,监管机构的检查员发现，一些私立职业学院（其中包括面向华裔社区的学校）领取了政府的资助，却几乎没有提供任何培训课程。一个显著的案例中，检查员震惊地发现某个学院校园内根本没有老师和学生上课培训，而学校对此的解释是，教师带”日托教师”项目的培训生去商场“学习如何买玩具”了，因此没人在校上课。还有一些所谓的“幽灵课堂”，既没有老师也没有学生，学校和学生甚至直接瓜分了资金，却根本没有传授任何技能。
Inspectors at the time uncovered private career colleges, including some targeting the Chinese community, receiving government cheques while providing little or no real training. In one notorious case, inspectors discovered there were no classes on campus at all. A program for aspiring daycare workers claimed that taking students on a trip to the mall to ‘learn how to buy toys’ counted as instruction — leaving classrooms empty with no teachers or students. Some schools and students simply shared the funds without delivering any classes.
