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The other day I happened to be in Ottawa. I happened to have a lunch at a downtown restaurant where I happened to overhear a conversation between two businessmen. The subject of their conversation, as it happened, was how to get money out of the federal government.

The one was a lobbyist, the other was his client. The lobbyist was reporting back on his discussions with a ministerial staffer regarding the grant his client was seeking. The staffer had advised him on the kind of supporting documentation the client would need to supply — mostly about job creation — to ensure the money flowed. It didn’t sound like it would be a particularly hard sell.

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I imagine this sort of conversation goes on every day in restaurants all over the city, as it did under the previous government, as it will under the next. It is the same conversation that goes on in every provincial capital and every city of any size in the country. It is, perhaps, Canada’s largest industry, but of a peculiar kind. For those employed in it are not in the business of selling products to consumers. They are in the business of buying subsidies from governments.