We simply looked at changes in the number of manufacturing jobs by province between January 2005 and January 2008. In Canada overall, 280,000 jobs were lost. Very few were lost in Alberta, but aid was distributed per capita within the traditional sectors, and amounted to about 10%. That case isn't unique, it shows a strong tendency on the part of the federal government. Increasingly, aid is distributed per capita.
Concerning the Canada Social Transfer, it has been shown that welfare has produced somewhat comparable results. The funding is given to provinces according to their demographic weight, regardless of how many welfare recipients they have. As such, Alberta receives more welfare money from the federal government than it pays out to its welfare recipients. Alberta receives slightly more than $9,000 per welfare recipient, whereas Newfoundland receives approximately $2,000. This shows that it makes no sense to inject funding into certain sectors according to provinces' demographic weight, without taking into account their needs.