Quebec City Should Pay Attention to Oshawa

There was a warning sign posted to Quebecor and those other supporters who are trying to get Quebec back into the NHL, when Oshawa City Council voted not to have a debate on building a new stadium to get the CFL's Hamilton Tiger Cats.

Oshawa decisively turned down an opportunity to get its city on to the professional sports map, that a few adventurous members of the council wanted.

The majority of the council felt it was in the best interests of the taxpayers not to help bail out an owner of a professional sports franchise by pouring their money into a sports facility.

Many councilors viewed Hamilton owner Bob Young as someone who would one day hold them to ransom, as they feel he is doing with the city council in Hamilton.

They felt that the local public was not in favor of investing their tax dollars in a sports enterprise of a private, professional nature, instead of an international event that could be said to be representing Canada, a province, and a local community.

Quebec should be paying attention to this, because their efforts to build a $400 million arena and front an NHL franchise bid are based on getting government money from all three levels of Canadian government.

The Quebec City Council has already voted to invest $50 million for the new arena, with the provincial and federal governments to pay the rest, $175 million each.

While the provincial government has been warm to such an idea, investing federal money in such a project may have bad political repercussions.

Most of the Canadian public do not want their tax dollars invested in sports facilities for professional purposes.

They are willing to have their money spent on sports projects that represent Canada, like the recent Vancouver Olympics or the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games, but they do not want to pay money for projects that benefit rich sports franchise owners, except if it is indirectly, like a new Pan Am stadium eventually becoming the new home of the Hamilton Tiger Cats.

To sway the rest of Canada, Quebec is trying pass the argument that the new arena is necessary to bid for a future Winter Olympic Games.

But money is awarded by the Federal Government only AFTER a successful Olympic bid and Quebec is yet to get its toe wet in a step in that direction.

What Quebec should be doing is trying to attract more private investment to fund the project.

But that might mean (horrors!) having to accept investors from "English" Canada or the United States.

Most of the NHL arenas in Canada were funded privately, and many Canadians are also against using tax dollars to build facilities for a league that many of them view as hostile to Canada.

Many still remember how Quebec and Winnipeg were stripped of their teams, and how the NHL fought tooth and nail last year to prevent Hamilton from acquiring the Phoenix Coyotes.

Right now, Quebec's attempt to get an arena and a franchise are in limbo while they await the results of an unnecessary "feasibility study."

If Quebec had enough money, the shovels would already be in the ground.

Instead they are hoping that the provincial and federal governments will become sugar daddies for their NHL dreams, something unlikely, at least at the federal level, where Oshawa sounded the unspoken opinion of most Canadians.