Sun distorts Rae's position on Quebec arena funding

It wasn't particularly surprising, but I was relieved to learn that Sun Media distorted Bob Rae's position on the possibility of the federal government spending $175 million to help build a professional hockey arena in Quebec City with the goal of bringing the NHL's Nordiques back to the city.

The headline in the Sun chain yesterday, "Hoo-Rae for funding" certainly gave me pause. The article was reporting on a speech Rae gave to a fundraiser on Friday in Montreal, and the lede seemed to report his position quite unequivocally:

Bob Rae has told Liberal party members he backs federal funding for a new arena in Quebec City as long as it’s not the only initiative in the country.

If you read my last post, you'll know that I strongly disagree with that position. And I was surprised, and disappointed, in Bob's apparent position. My curiosity-meter was tweaked though when I went on to read the rest of the Sun story, and found no direct quotes that seemed to support that lede and headline.

The curiosity meter red-lined when I read CTV's story on that same fundraising speech which, surprise surprise, had a much different interpretation of Rae's comments:

Rae also said the Tories should be cautious in considering requests to devote millions of dollars in federal funding to a new hockey arena in Quebec City.

"Mr. Harper's got to understand that this is not just a one off thing that one can do for one city or one franchise. If you're going to have a policy, it's got to be a consistent policy right across the country," Rae said.

Now this position sounds more sensible. While I'd have preferred if he had added "and that's why we can't go funding pro-sports stadiums and arenas, not when we have a deficit and many other more important priorities" perhaps it was felt to be blindingly obvious. And he's absolutely right that you can't play favourites here. If you fund one, you need to fund them all. And how in the heck could we possibly afford that?

Still, the differing Sun and CTV reports raise the question, does Rae support funding the Quebec arena or not? If Sun has it right, why does CTV not mention that certaintly newsworthy fact at all?

Curious to clear this up, I sent Bob a message on Facebook and asked him, did you support funding the Quebec arena as the Sun reported, or urge caution as CTV reported? He replied quite quickly to clear things up:

I urged caution. I never spoke to Sun media. I said Harper needed to understand that this is not a "one off" decision. You can't just dole out money to a commercial arena in Quebec without understanding the implications for the rest of the country.

So it would seem the Sun completely distorted Rae's position, and he did not say let's fund all of them. He said you need to be cautious setting that kind of precedent.

Why torque his comments? Well, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the driving force behind bringing the Nordiques back to Quebec, the fellow who would be the biggest beneficiary of a taxpayer-funded Quebec City arena, also happens to own Sun Media, right? Surely they would have mentioned such a conflict in their coverage if it existed, right?

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Governments should not fund professional sports stadiums. Period.

While there are many notable differences between Canadians and our American cousins, one interesting one has been that while the Americans have always been eager to throw hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into sports stadiums where millionaire athletes play for billionaire owners, in Canada we’d always expected pro-sports to pay its own way. It has been an interesting dichotomy, particularly given the stereotype of Canadian interventionists vs. American free-market worshipers.

This noteable difference, however, may soon evaporate, if special interests in Quebec get there way. Apparently Quebecor boss Pierre Karl Péladeau wants to bring the NHL’s Nordiques back to Quebec City. So does Quebec City’s mayor. And Jean Charest. So does Stephen Harper. Hell, so do I. I’m not sure many people would object to an NHL team in Quebec. Or Hamilton, Winnipeg or Saskatoon. Let’s give Halifax a team too, while we’re at it.

Of course, the odds of an NHL led by Gary Bettman ever doing this are astronomical. But that hasn’t stopped Quebec from channeling Field of Dreams and deciding if they build an arena, a team will come. But instead of the billionare Péladeau opening his wallet, Quebec wants the taxpayers to foot the bill. Fighting for his political life, Premier Jean Charest has promised to kick-in. And now they’re trying to hot the federal government up for a cool $175 million.

Sadly, the Harper Conservatives haven’t dismissed this asinine notion out of hand. Not when there are votes to be bought in the Quebec City region, the one part of the province they still have a shot. Their Quebec MPs are on board (except Maxime Bernier) and Harper is promising arenas for all, while out West his caucus seems aghast.

My Liberals are sadly mixed. Denis Coderre, who inexplicably again has a critic portfolio, is pressuring Harper to fund the arena. Other Liberal MPs, such as Keith Martin and Joyce Murray, have taken to Twitter to oppose the idea.

And then there’s newly-minted deputy Liberal leader Ralph Goodale who, unfortunately, told the media that if Quebec is getting $175 million, that’s cool, but he wants “over” $100 million for a football stadium in Regina.

No, no, NO! The Conservatives are wrong on this, and Liberals like Goodale and Coderre should not be egging them on. The government has no place subsidizing professional sports stadiums. And if you fund one, you’ll have to fund them all. It’s a dangerous precedent we can’t afford to set, particularly in today’s budgetary climate.

This isn’t investment we’re talking about here. It’s subsidy. We’ll never see this money back. If these are economically-viable projects, they wouldn’t need government funding. They would be financed by the private sector. If the private sector won’t fund it, then it’s not a viable project, and all the government funding in the world will only delay the inevitable business failure.

Now known as Rogers Place, Vancouver’s General Motors Place was built in $160 million in 1995 (gee, how’s that for inflation?) and was privately financed by the Griffiths family. Sure, Arthur Griffiths ended-up overleveraging himself by buying an NBA expansion franchise at the same time and ended-up losing it all to John McCaw, but point is he had an economically-viable project and he got it financed privately, without blackmailing the taxpayers for donations.

There’s no reason why Quebec City, Regina, and every other city can’t do the same. And if they can’t, then they must not be able to support a team and probably shouldn’t have one.

I hope the government comes to its senses and kills this thing in its infancy. And I hope the Liberal leadership brings the caucus together, gets everyone on the same page and says a firm No to taxpayer-funded stadiums, wherever they may be.

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