Since the early 1990s, Ontario governments of every partisan stripe have used tax dollars to subsidize private for-profit businesses. Between 1991/92 and 2008/09 (the first and last years for which comparable data are available), Ontario’s governments spent $27.7 billion on direct subsidies to corporations. For anyone who paid income tax in 2008, the cost of corporate welfare was $424 per Ontarian (or $848 per dual-income couple). By lowering taxes rates for all and offering subsidies to none, Ontario’s government could concentrate its spending and tax policy where it would do the most good.

Contraband tobacco has been a recurring problem in Canada, and one that has become noticeably worse over the past decade. It has been estimated that contraband tobacco makes up roughly 30% of the total Canadian tobacco market. In 2009, the RCMP seized a record high of 975,000 cartons of contraband cigarettes.

Learning from the Past: How Canadian Fiscal Policies of the 1990s Can Be Applied Today provides a historical overview that identifies parallels between the fiscal challenges facing Canadian governments in the 1990s and those facing governments in 2011.