Alberta’s corporate welfare paradise
Once in a while, the Fraser Institute publishes a paper that makes their province of origin look really bad. They don’t do it on purpose, of course, but it ends up that way. Take their latest paper on corporate welfare. Their idea is to hammer the concept of incentives to the auto idustry. They put in a table of corporate welfare by province. I added the per capita bit. Here is the result:
| Prov: | $$MIL | Per Capita |
| PQ | 5,442 | $ 711.28 |
| AB | 1,448 | $ 429.60 |
| YT | 12 | $ 384.62 |
| CANADA | 11,073 | $ 339.15 |
| SK | 272 | $ 275.44 |
| PE | 38 | $ 275.36 |
| MB | 260 | $ 220.62 |
| BC | 948 | $ 219.43 |
| ON | 2,412 | $ 189.84 |
| NB | 111 | $ 148.16 |
| NU | 4 | $ 131.58 |
| NF | 51 | $ 100.02 |
| NT | 4 | $ 94.34 |
| NS | 71 | $ 75.93 |
Alberta has the second highest amount of corporate welfare in the country - three times the amount in New Brunswick adjusted for the size of the population. Fun stuff. Of course, it is way higher than that. I include corporate tax and royalty breaks in my definition of corporate welfare (or corporate incentives the kinder definition). If you roll in the tax/royalty breaks, Alberta would be ahead of Quebec for corporate welfare.
Oink oink oink.
The media (and the university of Calgary) has propogated this national image of Atl. Canada as the corporate welfare haven. Look again at the chart and where Atl. Canada fits.
Funny thing - the national media doesn’t point out this simple fact. Check out the National Post here and the Toronto Star here.
