TORONTO - Only a fraction of government stimulus cash was actually spent in Ontario last year, even though many infrastructure projects were rushed through the approval process -- some in a matter of hours -- with little vetting, a provincial watchdog revealed Monday.

Tight deadlines built into the spending program, which were recently extended by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, meant government officials spent little time assessing projects, auditor general Jim McCarter found.

McCarter also found that half of the $3.1 billion committed to Ontario infrastructure went to a small number of projects that, in most cases, weren't "shovel ready" -- a key funding criteria -- and weren't scrutinized properly.

Federal and provincial officials were aware that much of the money allocated to the three stimulus programs McCarter audited wouldn't be spent in the first year, he noted in his annual report.

Priority was supposed to be given to projects that would spend half the money or more by March 31, 2010. But it was "clear" from communications between Ottawa and Ontario staff that "it would be unreasonable to expect recipients to spend evenly over the two years of the program," according to his report.

"Instead, federal staff said to expect that spending would be heavily weighted toward 2010/11," it said.

Less than $510 million -- or 16 per cent -- of the total $3.1 billion was spent by the end of the first year, he said. That means only an estimated 7,000 jobs were created or saved, rather than the projected 44,000.

"We understood that they had to do this in a fairly short time frame, but there was no limit on the number of applications, for example," McCarter said.

The opposition took aim at the government over the job numbers and the minimal vetting of proposals.

"You have to wonder why so few jobs were created," said NDP Leader Andrea Horwath.

"(The projects) went through very, very quickly with very little oversight, so that always is something you have to be concerned about because it's tax dollars that are funding these projects."

Four municipalities in Ontario submitted almost 1,100 applications -- about 40 per cent of the total number, McCarter found.

"They basically had to fly through these applications and make recommendations," he said.

Applications worth about $600 million were assessed in just four hours, he noted. The haste made it "virtually impossible" for the necessary review work to be done.

Applicants also weren't required to prioritize their projects. One municipality qualified for $194 million in stimulus cash -- most of it for projects that ranked near the bottom of its own priority list.

"There was, I think, 500 that came in over the course of four hours," McCarter said. "They basically had to fly through these applications and make recommendations."

Some projects were also approved by the ministers' offices over the concerns of bureaucrats, with "no documentation whatsoever" to justify the move, he said.

That raised McCarter's suspicions, so he asked his staff to look at 100 projects that were approved to see if there was an "emphasis" placed on Liberal ridings.

"So we actually looked at it by riding to see whether basically -- I'll be blunt -- all the money went to Liberal-friendly ridings," McCarter said.

"And we actually found no discernable pattern. We actually did not find what we thought we might find. Having said that, again, there was no documentation."

The deadline for completing the projects was so tight that it forced some recipients to pay extra fees to contractors or trim project specifications.

In one case, it cost $620,000 extra to move up the completion date of a new recreational facility by two months to meet the March 2011 deadline.

Harper extended the deadline last week to Oct. 31, 2011 -- one full construction season. The prime minister insisted more than 90 per cent of projects across Canada would be completed by the end of next March but the extension was warranted for a "small" number of projects.

The federal government had been obfuscating for months on the deadline.

McCarter also chastised the Ontario government over thousands of taxpayer-funded billboards that were erected at stimulus construction sites last spring.

Ontario has strict rules that require the vast majority of government-paid ads -- except for those that appear online -- must be vetted by the auditor general.

McCarter said his office butted heads with the government over the signs, which the province claimed weren't covered by the rules.

"We remain convinced that most passersby would see these billboards not only as information but also as promotion of a government program, consistent with other forms of government advertising," his report said.

As Ottawa and Ontario pump more money into new campus projects, many buildings at Ontario's 24 colleges of applied arts and technology continue to deteriorate, he noted.

The repair and maintenance backlog is estimated to be well over $500 million and could reach $1 billion in 15 years, McCarter said.