The ruling Canadian government has come under tremendous flak from the opposition party and the media there for spending a humungous amount of money to host a Bollywood awards function.

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The figures released through the Canadian Right to Information Act shows that as much as around Rs 520 crore (10.5 million Canadian dollars) was spent on the event. The media in Canada has gone into attack mode the moment this figure was discovered questioning the necessity of spending the taxpayer’s money on hosting a Bollywood award’s show.

“The Ontario government paid for an Indian entertainment company’s telephone bills, airfare, hospitality,  construction and transportation of set pieces for the much-hyped International Indian Film Academy Awards (IIFA) it wanted so badly to host, documents show. The CBC has obtained the preliminary accounting figures revealing what the government paid Mumbai promotions company Wizcraft International Entertainment — a breakdown that shows the company received the lion’s share of taxpayer’s cash to run the massive Bollywood awards event’s first North American appearance in Toronto in June. The event came with massive fanfare and political heft for Dalton McGuinty, who had his photo snapped with Bollywood superstars on the green carpet at the awards — his enthusiastic support for the festival a clear effort to woo immigrant voters, observers said at the time,” observed National Post of Canada. About half of that sum went to the event management company hosting the show.

The government of course defended the spending of money saying that it was necessary public relations exercise. “This was the first time this prestigious event was hosted in North America, and it drew tens of thousands of visitors to Ontario,” Mukunthan Paramalingham, a spokesperson for Minister of Tourism and Culture Michael Chan told National Post. The government has justified it, citing that Toronto Tourism reported one of the busiest weekends of the year (June 23rd to 25th) as the government estimated that 40,000 visitors came to Toronto that weekend.

“Our preliminary research shows that earned media coverage of the event reached hundreds of millions of people worldwide, helping to raise Ontario’s profile as an international tourist destination. That was valuable exposure for our province,” Paramalingham told the newspaper.