As far as I know, Canonical has never turned a profit.
Unlike most of Linux fans imagine, Canonical and Red Hat don't compete that much in the corporate world.
I work for a fortune 50, Canonical does a decent job competing there.
Free or paid?
I don't know if Mark was paid last time I saw him drop by the office, but I imagine he planned on making some money.
Was that snark really necessary? Parent had a valid question; your org could be using the OSS Ubuntu which would be free, or the enterprise version which costs money. You never really specified which, and it changes the argument drastically from a cost perspective (and therefore potentially some of the motivations behind the choice.)
But in all fairness: CentOS
Besides that, from the open source perspective, RedHat's contribution is greater than Canonical， especially the linux kernel.
Not just the Linux kernel. Canonical is primarily a consumer of open source that does some really need value add ontop of it (see Juju for an outstanding example). Redhat is primarily an excellent engineering company with good enterprise sales and (compared to Canonical) lousy marketing.