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Last weekend was that huge all-american circus of a football game, the Money Bowl. I boycotted the event. I hate professional sports. I hated the Olympics too. I think the main reason I hate the idea of these events has to do with priorities. Big picture spending priorities and the complicity priorities of the Press.
Yesterday, the CBC News posted a story about The Federal Government building an arena for a NHL team in Qebec. With taxpayer money. I had the impression that NHL Players were doing pretty good financially, with a few notable exceptions (ever heard of Bear Mountain? The smart money [not hockey players, or local taxpayers] didn’t go there, for everyone else, there’s the bridge to nowhere!)
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has a new plan to funnel millions of federal tax dollars into a controversial plan to build a new NHL arena in Quebec City, CBC News has learned.
Sources tell CBC News that the Conservative government is considering allowing part of the federal gas tax revenues to be used for construction of “large entertainment centres” such as the proposed new Quebec City arena.
Story here.
Today, apparently, the story has modified somewhat, like some PAB hack took an eraser to the story and the tax payers of Quebec are on the hook, but the Fed seems to have toned down the rhetoric somewhat, for now. Downplayed in the same time period, was the possible merger between the TSX and London SE, at the same time rumours circulated south of us of a merger with the German Exchange. Along with the secret talks between Harper and Obama on borders and security. The media seemed to prefer the Hockey story.
Last year, the BC Government decided to spend over a half a billion dollars on a retractable roof for BC Place Stadium, it turns out the roof was a requirement for Pavco. to build a lucrative casino next door. The same year that the Olympics drained the Province of money and set the stage for unprecedented security spending of a billion dollars. Which in turn allowed for the degradation of civil liberties and the militarization of the police, in terms of armaments. Today, reports out of Vancouver suggest that the ill-fated Olympic Village is costing the taxpayers big time and it’s actually too soon to tell how bad that might become for us as the housing bubble in Vancouver bursts with a possible tsunami of a stormsurge. Meanwhile, BC continues to lead the country in child poverty
I am sure pro hockey players are not all bad, (not so sure about the football players, frankly) but not one of them is worth the money they command. Ditto for celebrities in general. In my humble opinion, all of this celebrity class are constructed for two main reasons. The first being an excuse for politicians and CEO’s to justify their highly inflated wages. How many times have you heard a politician compare his salary to a sports figure when justifying raises? The second is their value to distract the exhausted working class from the stuff they really need to know, if they want their children to have a fighting chance of survival.
We need to pay attention now. Act locally. Vote with our feet. If the only power we have left is our consumption, then let us choose how we allocate every dime, every last endangered penny, away from these spectacles that are designed as our downfall. Boycott consumer sports and insist that our governments, on every level, address the need for social equality.
Call it sweat equity. Your contribution to a better world for everyone.
Actually, Premier Charest announced in a news conference, yesterday, that he and Quebec City mayor, Regis Labeaume were footing the entire bill for this stupid arena. Charest desperate to buy himself love.
As a quebec citizen and taxpayer, how does that make you feel, ck? I hope that means that poverty has been eradicated in La Belle Province?
ck Reply:
February 11th, 2011 at 1:18 PM
Personally, I think it’s ludicrous, but then, I’m of the pragmatic camp. My French nationalist hockey fan friends tend to be more of the romantic persuasion where their culture is concerned. Today, they’re romanticising the return of the Nordiques, something Gary Bettman has even come out and said, basically “Don’t build this new facility on my account”, saying he is not promising a team to Quebec City.
Jean Charest has basically shocked me, he’s usually been more pragmatic and strategic in the past.
More to the point, a man who has never had any love lost for Stevie Spiteful, I’m not getting why he would provide political cover for him. I mean, news like this, somewhere, Stevie Spiteful and his Quebec City area MPs must be breathing a collective sigh of relief and that hot potato is basically out of their hands. Too bad, if Steve and his Quebec City minions remained on the hot seat, they stood a greater chance of losing those seats in the next election; seats they can ill afford to lose in their quest for that coveted majority.
No, poverty is far from eradicated in Quebec. Furthermore, the timing of this announcement couldn’t have been worse. The crown prosecutors are about to strike, demanding a 40% salary hike (they are the lowest paid in Canada last I checked; even the more right leaning pundit, Jean Lapierre thinks they deserve that raise); money the Charest gov’t claims they don’t have.
I work for social services, enforcing the Youth Protection mandate and Young Offenders’ Act and our budget, like anything else has to be slashed in half. A bill (Bill 100) has been passed to this effect. I imagine my co-workers wouldn’t happy to hear this arena news neither.
Our health care desperately needs help and for openers, Charest needs to stop sinking money into the private health care sector, something he refuses to do to date. Problem is, I don’t see the Parti Quebecois, or worse, whatever new right of center party Francois Legault launches soon will do anything to change that. Lobbyists. Those subsidies are, I think, what is allowing family doctors (over 200 to date) to leave the Medicare system for private system. Now with new arena money, I expect it could get worse.
Oh and since the Parti Quebecois, which is sure to win the next provincial election (unless Legault moves fast), would probably be footing 100% of the bill toward a new arena. Would Legault spend on a new arena? In all honesty, he would probably campaign against it with his right of center values, but if he ever got close to a taste at power, I wouldn’t be surprised if he acquiesced.
Time to start a facebook campaign, you never know, it could catch on
Seriously though, this is a nationwide problem. Politicians are not going to stop wasting our money until we make them. There is an interesting new movement starting at the municipal level south of the border. I think we should pay close attention. http://www.globalexchange.org/war_peace_democracy/democracyschool.html
While I agree that political priorities re: professional and amateur sports are askew, I also think painting professional games (including the amateur Olympic kind) and athletes as hateful and sporting events worthy of general boycott is misguided. The politics of sport aside, athletes contribute much through charity work. For every Michael Vick, there are dozens if not hundreds of athletes, especially our Canadians one, involved in works of good.
Painting sport and its players the way you do in unfair not just to them, but to the people – many of them progressives – who enjoy sport and its participants. Boycotting a game or hating all sports is small minded. If one is to hate, aim better. The Cons deserve our disdain, the greed that spawns poverty should be eradicated, hate itself should be something we should aspire to defeating. Yes, the Quebec arena fiasco deserves our anger. But more because of the Cons’ underhanded priorities. Hockey is just a pawn, like you or I and everything else these days in Canada.
I don’t hate sports or athletes at all Jymn, I hate the politics of how we value work. I think TorontoEmerg deserves every penny and more, and my friend down the road who struggles to afford to feed her livestock locally sourced organic feed, well, she deserves a bigger slice of the pie. No-one is worth a million dollars a year, while the other 98% does so poorly.
Also, we should not be asked to subsidize sport venues while one in five kids in BC go hungry.