Bucks for Pucks? How About Dollars for Doctors?

The only pucks the government should be funding are urinal cakes in hospital washrooms.

Updating her op-ed campaign against the provincial government’s plans to fund a NHL arena in Quebec City, the National Post’s Tasha Kheiriddin points to the disgraceful conditions at Montreal’s LaSalle Hospital, where doctors have started filming Youtube videos of their underfunded facility in a depressingly direct plea to get more taxpayer money. How can Jean Charest fund a hockey arena while this kind of thing is going on, Kheiriddin demands. “Never mind that the NHL abandoned ship there sixteen years ago, or that the International Ski Federation has stated that Quebec City’s potential Olympic bid would founder on its sub-standard hills,” she writes. “Bread and circuses must go on – while sick patients languish in third-world ERs.” It’s a poignantly illustrated argument, to be sure, but one that you have to think is disingenuous coming from Kheiriddin, who last August wrote this piece declaring that “more money isn’t the answer to better health care.” You are a flip-flopper, madam!

The Ottawa Citizen’s Elizabeth Payne provides some great background on the issue of using public money to fund sports stadiums, writing that the U.S. addiction to major sports complexes has been disastrous. “Even as a handful of American municipalities declare bankruptcy, and other cities are still paying for stadiums that have long since been torn down, sports teams in the U.S. continue to look to taxpayers to help them build new state-of-the-art facilities, and even to absorb property taxes on those buildings.” And the taxpayers keep obliging. In Canada however Ottawa was always avoided funding major league stadiums, and in 2000 the mere suggestion of doing so provoked serious public backlash. As such the provincial and municipal governments’ deal to fund an arena in Quebec City presents a dangerous precedent, and Payne wonders why the federal government is trying to hop on board. Studies show sports franchises don’t boost cities’ economies significantly, so why not spend the money on upgrading our ageing infrastructure instead? Fine, but it’s just that those blue jerseys look so cool …