OpenText's $120M grant hinges on creation of 1,200 new jobs, says province
Waterloo-based tech giant OpenText would have to replace any jobs that it might cut in Ontario – on top of creating some or all of 1,200 new jobs in the province – in order to access any of a $120-million grant extended to it by the province last year.
OpenText announced on May 20 it would be cutting five per cent of its global workforce of 8,500, which amounts to 425 positions. But the company, which offers enterprise information management services to large corporations, didn't specify where those cuts would happen.
"Our partnership is structured so that even if Ontario is impacted by their recent news, they would have to replace all jobs lost and then create new jobs up to the agreement standards prior to receiving funding," wrote Andrew Forgione, a spokesperson for Brad Duguid, the Ontario minister of economic development, employment, and infrastructure, in an email.
According to Duguid, the agreement between the province and OpenText, which was announced last spring during the provincial election campaign, stipulates that funding will be rolled out over seven years, beginning this year. As part of the agreement, OpenText will build a research and development centre in Waterloo to help the company focus on cloud-based services.
"The expectation for Ontario is there'll be very, very minimal impact here, so let's make sure we keep that in perspective," said Duguid of potential job cuts in the province. "I don't anticipate any relationship behind what they're doing globally in terms of their workforce and what they're doing in Ontario."
OpenText's worldwide headquarters is in Waterloo but it also has offices across the province in Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, Peterborough and Richmond Hill. It's still not clear how those offices will be affected by cuts.
Citing commercial sensitivity, Duguid wouldn't specify any additional timelines or targets for job creation in the province for OpenText to meet, beyond saying they had to happen within seven years. OpenText responded to questions over cuts and job targets with an emailed statement.
"OpenText remains 100 per cent committed to creating jobs in Ontario and fulfilling our commitments to the Ontario government over the length of the agreement," wrote OpenText spokesperson Kasey Holman.
Questions remain over agreement
On Monday at Queen's Park, Kitchener-Waterloo NDP MPP Catherine Fife asked Premier Kathleen Wynne to reveal the details of the agreement between the province and OpenText, so the public can determine whether jobs are actually being created.
"Since you claim to be committed to openness and transparency, will you make that agreement public so that Ontarians can judge whether or not the 1,200 jobs you took credit for creating are actually going to be created?" said Fife.
But Duguid fired back at Fife in an interview on Thursday, and accused the NDP of standing in the way of job creation.
"The NDP have never been a job-friendly party, and continue to demonstrate that with their irresponsible requests for us to put out commercially sensitive information," he said. "I think it's irresponsible and just another indication of how out of touch the NDP is with the real-world economy.
Duguid claims without government aid, those 1,200 new jobs were heading out of the country to the U.S., Brazil and the Philippines. Open Text has several offices in the U.S. and an office in Sao Paulo.
