VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Government subsidies are costing Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars, according to a new report.
A policy group is demanding more transparency when it comes to the money Ottawa doles out.
Since 1981, federal, provincial, and local governments have spent more than spent $684 billion on subsidies to private sector business, Crown Corporations, and consumers, according to numbers from the right-wing Fraser Institute.
Senior Fellow Mark Milke says it’s costing taxpayers a small fortune. “In 2009 alone — and this is the last year in the study because StatsCan stopped collecting the data — the amount was equivalent to $1,500 per taxpayer in Canada.”
Milke says the government doesn’t properly break down the numbers, so its hard to track where the money goes. His recommendation?
“First, for Statistics Canada to produce some slightly better data so people get a sense of what kind of subsidies are going where,” says Milke. “Also, some of these subsidies are simply not justifiable, especially business subsidies.
He says in 2009, federal, provincial, and municipal subsidies amounted to 1.5 per cent of Canada’s GDP.