After the recent "hockey summit" in Toronto, where Canada's six NHL team owners gathered to press politicians for special tax concessions, much of the reaction was rightly critical. Even Premier Glen Clark, a recent proponent of corporate welfare, was openly critical of leaning on taxpayers to help millionaire players and owners with their cash-flow problem.

Despite the initial thumbs-down, don't think a special deal with professional hockey on taxpayers' behalf is dead. Politicians regularly cave in to special interests, perhaps especially when they are represented by 19-year-olds on skates. To prevent another business from slurping at the taxpayer trough, Canadians should remind politicians of a few basic facts.

Professional, for-profit hockey is wonderful entertainment for Canadians to enjoy but it is just that: entertainment. The notion that economic apocalypse would visit Canada if, tragically, some of our NHL teams moved south, is nonsense. Some argue that a break, either through giving teams a share in lottery revenues, or through tax concessions (of the sort not available to other Canadian businesses,) is economically smart. Such "help," the theory goes, would at least preserve the jobs and tax revenues created by the NHL in Canada.

The theory is flawed. If I break someone's window and it costs them $500 to replace it, that is $500 that will not be spent elsewhere, say on a new TV or lift tickets to Whistler. Should the worst-case scenario materialize and some NHL teams go south, Canadians will spend $50 on a ski ticket that they used to drop at GM Place, three bucks on movie popcorn as opposed to a hot dog at a Canucks game. Economic studies churned out by team owners that conveniently forget this substitution effect are worthless, and the serious economic analyses that do factor it in arrive at one conclusion: pro sports subsidies produce no net benefit to an economy in terms of jobs or tax revenues.

Economic apocalypse arguments aside, yes, taxes are a problem in Canada for all businesses. If the NHL wants to argue for lower property taxes for all Canadian property owners, they'll have Canadians' full support. If they want lottery revenues, forget it. Governments should not transfer tax dollars, no matter how they are collected, from taxpayers to a private business. And if the NHL wants an exclusive deal on their business taxes, they can get in the same line-up as everyone else.

Instead of sweet-talking taxpayers, Canada's hockey owners should deal with their key problem: skyrocketing player salaries. The average NHL player today makes $1.2 million (U.S.), up from $270,000 (U.S.) in 1991. And while there is nothing immoral about large salaries made in free market conditions, professional sports are often heavily subsidized by taxpayers. Teams that receive special deals on property taxes, breaks on rents, or in some cases - free stadiums, are free to spend their money elsewhere, i.e., on player salaries higher than they would be in an undistorted market.

This subsidy game is costly to U.S. taxpayers but also to Canadians where the whack-the-taxpayer game is played with only slightly less enthusiasm. In 1994, the Edmonton Oilers persuaded Edmonton's councillors to institute a ticket tax to help the team pay its $2.8 million annual rent, and then managed to have the rent scrapped entirely last year, while still retaining ticket tax proceeds. Talk about eating and having your proverbial cake. In a sneakier move to subsidize pro sports, Crown corporations such as Canada Post, Via Rail and the Royal Canadian Mint buy space in arenas with taxpayer dollars. And those corporate boxes at GM Place are nice corporate write-offs. But try as Canada might, we will never win a hockey subsidy war with the United States. The Americans have deeper pockets, and many more cities ready to skin taxpayers in order to build luxury stadiums.

Rather than continue a subsidy war Canada cannot win, Canada's political representatives should ask themselves why they feel the need to "solve" a problem created by American politicians, grasping NHL players who won't stop asking for more money, and owners who can't say "no"? If Canada's hockey barons were serious about the underlying problem, as opposed to simply cutting another deal at taxpayer expense, they would have held a joint Canadian-American NHL summit, and agreed to stop seeking taxpayer handouts of any variety.