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“By lowering taxes rates for all and offering subsidies to none, Ontario’s government could concentrate its spending and tax policy where it would do the most good,” the report reads.

Lower taxes would also erase the “inherent unfairness” of subsidies, Mr. Milke said. “You’re knee-capping competitors who don’t have the same subsidy,” he said.

“I don’t know, and you don’t know, and the Ontario government doesn’t know, which business sector is going to be the next Microsoft or Apple,” Mr. Milke said. “There’s a case for neutrality.”

Ontario’s Minister of Economic Development and Innovation, Brad Duguid, said such spending is a necessity when Ontario is bidding against the United States and Europe for industry. “We’re in a fierce fight for jobs and economic development, and we can’t go into that fight completely unarmed,” Mr. Duguid said.

Mr. Duguid also points to innovation funding, such as providing $1-million to Markham, Ont.-based Novo Plastics Inc. to develop a plastic muffler, among other things. “There’s gaps in the private sector when it comes to things like venture capital funding — there’s a need for startups to get a little bit of help,” Mr. Duguid said.

Mr. Milke’s report places blame for corporate welfare equally on Ontario’s Liberal, NDP and Progressive Conservative governments. “All parties are guilty of this right across the country,” he said.

Similarly, calls to end corporate welfare are also shared across the political spectrum. The phrase “corporate welfare” was first coined by NDP leader David Lewis in the 1972 federal election. During Progressive Conservative leader Mike Harris’ successful 1995 run for Ontario premier, he declared that “corporate welfare dependency, like welfare dependency generally, is a cycle that can and must be broken.”