Last year, the BC Government launched its Carrot Rewards app, which offered Air Miles and other business loyalty points in return for downloading the app and doing healthy things like taking surveys. It cost taxpayers $7.5 million.

We thought it was a dumb idea.

Well, it’s been a year, so we thought we would file a Freedom of Information request to see what our $7.5 million has got us. One presumes the province will be a much healthier place…

Or not.

According to the documents, the app has been downloaded 103,515 times. That’s a cost of $72.45 per downloader. Yikes.

But that isn’t the greatest metric. After all, lots of people download free apps, look at them once, and never use them.

The Carrot Rewards app reports 70,513 “valid and active” users. That’s a taxpayer subsidy of $106.36 per user.

Air Miles seems to have fallen by the wayside – instead, your tax dollars have apparently been spent on 40.5 million SCENE points (movie tickets), 9.98 million Petro-Points (gas), 7.58 million More Rewards points (Save On Foods) and 1.85 million Aeroplan points.

We still think it’s a dumb idea.