ON -- As entrepreneurs across the country get ready to celebrate Small Business Week, which runs from Oct. 18-24, the McGuinty government has announced that it is no longer accepting applications for a program that helps people transition from unemployment to self-employment.

The Self-Employment Benefits (SEB) program helps qualified applicants, primarily people in receipt of Employment Benefits (EI), start a business with in-class training and follow-up consulting support.

The $61.9 million allocated to the program will be used to support the 3000 people who are currently active in the program, but no new applications will be accepted.

A representative from the office of John Milloy, the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, noted that new funding could still be available next year.

The decision comes as the government examines all of its retraining programs, including the Second Career program which has seen a dramatic increase in applications and has had a recent injection of $78 million in new funding.

"The second career program alone has been such an overwhelming success, we were taking approximately 1200 people per month into training programs," said Tanya Blazina, a government representative.

"In September we helped 10,000 people enroll into a college program through second career, which is about an 800% increase in applications we are dealing with and that is only one program of Employment Ontario."

The average Second Career agreement costs taxpayers $21,013 per participant, significantly more than the average of $15,574 for participants in the SEB program.

A report from Auditor General Jim McCarter found inconsistencies in the way the SEB program provided funding to participants and noted that clients in similar financial circumstances might receive "quite different amounts of support to pursue their training or start their business".

The report also found that the administrators have insufficient information about whether "… clients remained employed in the fields they were trained for and whether self-employment clients were able to sustain their new businesses."

Most provinces and territories offer a self-employment program. In 2007 the program was transferred from HRSDC to the Ontario government through a Labour Market Development Agreement (LMDA).

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