Governments giving millions or even billions to corporations is nothing new. Giving outright grants, awarding “loans” no one really believes will be repaid, even “above-market” payments for goods and services are all decades-old ways of slipping cash to private-sector players.

Shipbuilders, aircraft manufacturers, carmakers, mining companies, oil companies, banks and credit unions, software and cellphone companies and many, many others have been recipients of taxpayer money when it suited political goals, or when those companies agreed to help advance a government’s policies.

For instance, when Ottawa gave Montreal’s Bombardier $373 million loan back in February, it was not the plane-maker’s first injection. The first came in 1966. Since then, there have been 48 more.

Federal and provincial governments have long used your money and mine to attract new businesses, persuade existing ones not to leave or to just plain reward corporations willing to go along with controversial government decisions.

But what is new is the way more and more of this tax-funded generosity is going to “green” energy companies.

The next time some politician, bureaucrat, academic or activist tries to tell you there is a market for alternative energy (wind, solar, biomass, etc.), remember that without massive taxpayer subsidies there would be almost no wind or solar power, or electricity plants run on burning woodchips.

There is limited profit in most “green” energy without massive infusions of public cash, either from taxpayers or utility customers.

That means there is very little true market for alternate energy. What there is, is a growing list of private companies that are only too happy to take “free” money as long as governments shell it out.

Would Alberta utilities shutdown their coal-fired power plants in favour of hydro, wind and solar in the absence of hundreds of millions in subsidies for the latter (not to mention a law forbidding the former)?

Would oilsands companies express their support for carbon taxes if truckloads of the money raised was not going to them?

Would Ontario wind power companies keep erecting expensive turbines in the absence of 20- and 30-year long contracts from the provincial government that force homeowners and small businesses to pay double the cost or more for their power?

The answer, of course, is no in each case.

Even knowing all that, the extent of green subsidies is staggering, particularly considering that all this “green” energy is doing little to save the planet – the main justification for the taxes and spending.

A new report by Calgary economist Mark Milke for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation estimates that at the federal level nearly 80% of corporate welfare now goes to renewable energy companies. In

Alberta, it is nearly 70%. And in Ontario it is a staggering 96%.

Milke also looked at long-term contracts governments have signed with alternate energy companies and concludes that (sadly) “the most expensive corporate welfare bills have yet to hit Alberta and Ontario.”

If you thought it was bad so far, it’s only going to get much, much worse.

The British government is getting set to back away from its “renewables” campaign because over the past 12 years it has cost $3,200 per Briton with little to show environmentally. (Carbon emissions are higher than they were a dozen years ago.)

Yet Ontario, which has spent more per capita ($3,900), keepings forging ahead.

In many ways, the results don’t matter to the “progressive” politicians and activists pushing the “green” agenda. To them it is more important to be seen to care about the environment than to actually do anything about it – even if they have bankrupt taxpayers and consumers to prove their concern.

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I’m guessing that a personalized licence plate based on the Star Trek baddies, the Borg (“Resistance is futile”), is not exactly a chick magnate. So I would recommend to any male wanting a date with a woman who isn’t a cosplay queen from a comic-con to resist the temptation to order vanity plates that read “ASIMIL8.”

But if, like Winnipeg resident Nick Troller, you can’t resist, that’s your business, not mine. And it’s certainly not the business of hypersensitive, humourless functionaries.

On Wednesday, bureaucrats from Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI), the Crown corporation that handles vehicle insurance and registration on behalf of the provincial government, informed Troller he would have to “surrender” his unique plate “immediately” because MPI had received two complaints claiming the message was potentially offensive to indigenous people.

The irony is the politically correct, collectivist mindset that imagines such slights and outrages is very Borg-like.

Resistance is necessary.