Quebec City Arena? Not Likely!

"Our government has just posted a huge $56-billion deficit and the priority is to get back to a balanced budget through reductions in our own programs, and avoid by all means getting involved in risky financial ventures..." Maxime Bernier

Well put, and expressing sentiments echoed by most Canadians outside the province of Quebec. Politically aware, cost-sensitive and responsible governments do not use tax dollars to lavish assistance toward wealthy sport club owners. These are private enterprises, and federal funding has no business being extended in that area.

The Government of Quebec feels it incumbent upon themselves to fund a new Quebec City arena, and the premier has announced his government is prepared to pay 45% of the construction cost of a projected $400-million arena. That's business as usual for the Quebec government. The province can subsidize whatever enterprises it wishes within its jurisdiction and as long as the backlash is not too politically problematical.

And its worthwhile noting, just in passing, that the generosity of Canadian taxpayers will be funding the arena even without the federal government tossing in yet more. For a province that is forever whining it needs more federal assistance through provincial transfer payments, lavishing taxpayer funding on a sports arena is a peculiar choice.

Quebec already funds projects that are incumbent upon a provincial administration to support, like child care services and dental services and the lowest university student fees in the country, thanks to generous transfer payments, enabling the province to underwrite social programs not matched elsewhere by the 'have' provinces that enrich Quebec.

If the federal government, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper has indicated, is really prepared to hand over close to $200-million tax dollars to help Quebec City obtain its sports arena so an NHL team can be returned to the city, it should think a little more deeply into the situation, and consider why and by whom it is being severely reprimanded.

The head of Quebecor, Pierre Peladeau, is responsible for a wealthy empire. It would be his team returning to the league that would benefit, along with all the avid sports fans the arena is capable of supporting. An arena that poses no benefit to other taxpayers. This is a private enterprise, a money-making one, that should not expect any federal assistance, despite that Premier Charest feels otherwise.

Mr. Peladeau has made it clear he is not prepared to expend any of his empire's funding on the arena. Although the name of the game is 'no arena, no team', he claims that he is committed to an immense investment in bringing the team to Quebec City, operating the team expenses, paying the players enormous salaries.

His reasoning is rather specious; he is enormously wealthy at the head of a vast and rich enterprise. He is prepared to pay hockey players more money per season than most people earn in a lifetime of paid employment. Canadian taxpayers should not be invested in this elite scenario.

If Mr. Harper is disinterested in the advice given by the National Citizens Coalition, which he once himself headed, besotted now with the allure of pixie-dusting a new hockey arena into existence, he needs a good head-shake.

Maxime Bernier has appeared to have matured politically and socially, from all indications, from the impetuous younger man he was a few short years ago as an important minister in an earlier Conservative government from which he departed after regrettable indiscretions. Perhaps Mr. Harper should be heeding his words that he could not: "in good conscience" support public funding for a sports arena.

There are communities all over the country which would clamour for equal funding, and why would they not, if taxpayer funding is casually being offered where it should not be?