Where would a lazy, freeloading idler feel most at home, on the East Coast or the on Prairies Winter may have something to do with your answer but the level of government handouts would likely be the clincher.

The issue of handouts made headlines after a recent throwaway comment by John Mykythyshyn, a Canadian Alliance official who suggested Maritimers are lazy sods who prefer government handouts to working for a living. The comment cost Mykythyshyn his position with the Alliance but kept the issue of handouts and subsidies on the front burner.

If the amount of handouts to a region is any indication of productivity and work ethic, then hapless East Coasters may have some competition from the West. After the Atlantic Provinces, Manitoba is the next greatest beneficiary of transfers from Ottawa on a per-person basis and as a percentage of provincial revenues. This year Manitoba will receive 35% of its budget revenues from federal transfers compared to 37% for New Brunswick and only 22% for Saskatchewan. The effects of the handouts have been anything but edifying.

Federal equalization payments and business subsidies have created a culture of dependency and a new species of leeches and slugs - whether it be healthy unrepentant idlers living off pogey, grantapreneurs (grant-getting entrepreneurs) helping themselves to the public trough, or lower specie governments feeding off higher levels of government. They all deplete public support for the truly destitute in society and suck the life out of any healthy economy.

Eventually the leeches mutate into lethargic slugs. Why work when someone else can do it for you No country has a better understanding of this than the former Soviet Union.

Not unlike the Soviets, many Canadian politicians have a soft spot for redistribution of wealth in the form of business subsidies. In the name of equality, the federal government pillages the productive sector and redistributes its wealth to risky government-sanctioned business ventures that have a history of turning sour. It's a classic case of socialism for the rich.

In his new book Retreat From Growth, economist Fred McMahon concludes that decades of 1970-style industrial subsidy schemes have contributed to the overall economic stagnation of Atlantic Canada. Even though Ottawa has dumped hundreds of billions of dollars over the past 30 years into the region, it still remains economically depressed. A chapter on Manitoba would likely yield the same conclusion.

Governments have an abysmal record of playing venture capitalist and picking market winners and losers. In 1998, Industry Canada recouped a paltry 5% on a total business loan portfolio of $2.55 billion between 1982 and 1998. Over 50% of this money went to some of Canada's most profitable companies.

The best prescription for economic malaise is the tough love approach. Kick away the crutch and let the provinces find their feet. Governments would be forced to size-back and the productive sectors would be free to grow without political meddling.

If anyone is guilty of the charge of being lazy or lethargic it is the politicians who fish for more equalization payments and pillage their subjects with taxes for redistribution. The dead hand of corporate welfare and federal equalization payments will continue to deliver economic misery and ruin to Atlantic Canada and sure enough to Manitoba as well.