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1. Governments go subsidy-wild with $684 billion spent on subsidies since 1981

   Appeared in the Victoria Times Colonist and Trail Daily Times Ever wonder how Canada's net federal debt reached $671 billion by 2013? Or how net provincial debt among the provinces ended up at $509 billion that same year? Wonder no more. It's ...

2. Chrysler bellies back up to the corporate welfare trough

   Appeared in the Globe and Mail Back in late 2011 after the Occupy Wall Street protests, Fiat-Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne gave a speech in Toronto to decry what he called "the most inane displays of greed." The reference was to behaviour he ...

3. Bombardier and Canada's corporate welfare trap

   Appeared in the Vancouver Province In the land of government plenty that vast landscape populated with the tax dollars of Canadians there is no shortage of politicians willing to hand out and defend subsidies to business and no dearth of corporations ...

4. Cut the Orwellian apologia for corporate welfare

   Appeared in National Post In his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell argued that, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Orwell's quip came to mind again recently after reading Bombardier& ...

5. The Beatles, John Diefenbaker and chronic subsidy seekers

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald Back in 1962 John F. Kennedy had been president of the United States for one year, four lads from Liverpool were about to hit it big in the music world, and a Saskatchewan lawyer, John Diefenbaker, was in his fifth year as ...

6. Corporate Welfare at Industry Canada since John Diefenbaker

   Between April 1, 1961 and March 31, 2012, and adjusted for inflation to 2012 dollars, Industry Canada disbursed $34.3 billion through to other governments, foundations, and businesses. $22.1 billion of that money was disbursed to business, $8.8 billion ...

7. Crony capitalism the enemy of free enterprise

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald If business leaders ever wonder why a chunk of the public disdain business and call for higher corporate taxes or sector-specific increases (higher royalty rates for energy and mining, higher stumpage fees in forestry) or ...

8. How the media covered Occupy Wall Street-and crony capitalism

   Appeared in the Calgary Herald With the recent first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, consider one beef from protesters that was legitimate: crony capitalism. In general, Occupy Wall Street types could be described as a little too naïve about the ...

9. Industry Canada loses $5B; Access request finds $7.4B lent, just $2.1B repaid

   Appeared in the Financial Post and Calgary Herald The well-known quip- The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results- is often attributed to Albert Einstein or Mark Twain. Accurate attribution has ...

10. Corporate welfare breaks the $200-billion mark: An update on 13 years of business subsidies in Canada

    In late 2007, when the Fraser Institute published the first study on corporate welfare, the tally between April 1, 1994 and March 31, 2004 amounted to $144 billion. Two years later, we have statistics up to March 31, 2007; the total now stands at $202.7 ...