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OTTAWA — Doling out hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to help protect and nurture the private sector has been a costly practice — some would call it fiscal folly — for Canadian governments.

Over a period of nearly 30 years, federal, provincial and local authorities together spent almost $684-billion on subsidies.

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Even though some of that relief was passed onto consumers in the form of reduced rates for electricity and heating bills, the impact was marginal at best.

In a study released Tuesday, the Fraser Institute found that federal subsidies totalled $342.6-billion between 1981 and 2009.

The tally for provincial governments came in at $287-billion, while local officials authorized $54.2-billion in spending.

Annual subsidies overall topped out at $34.8-billion in 1984. The total declined to $11.6-billion in 1998, and finished at $24.4-billion in 2009, the study found.

Despite the high cost of subsidies, many politicians see them as urgent and necessary transfusions for anemic industries suffering from regional shifts in the economy and competitive threats from beyond our borders. For others, as crystalized by David Lewis in the NDP’s 1972 election slogan, subsidies pander to “corporate welfare bums” who could do just as well without any handouts.