Calgary Herald Column: On Arena "Need" and Protecting Taxpayers

My latest Calgary Herald column looks at the debate over Quebec City's proposed new arena, and why we've arrived at this notion that governments must pay for such facilities:

 

While many may wonder why it is, exactly, Quebec City needs a new, NHL-calibre arena, Quebec's premier sees the question differently.
At last week's news conference announcing support for the $400-million arena project, Jean Charest wondered, "Is it normal that a city like Quebec City doesn't have an arena?"
The man certainly has a sense of irony, albeit unintentionally so. The site of the news conference was Colisee Pepsi, which is - you guessed it - an arena in Quebec City.
So it is not whether Quebec needs an arena - it doesn't - but whether it needs a new arena. The Colisee Pepsi seats more than 15,000, which would seem quite suitable for concerts or pro wrestling or the sorts of events that might be hosted in an arena in a city with no NHL team.
No doubt many in Quebec City wish they still had the Nordiques to root for. Surely many Canadian hockey fans wish that, too.
However, one might take note of the fact that millions of other Canadians live in communities that also do not have NHL teams. Somehow, their lives go on.
So in the hope of someday possibly reacquiring an NHL franchise, taxpayers will foot the bill for this new arena. Build it and they will come. Or, maybe they won't.
Just ask the good people of Kansas City, who were certainly led to believe that by now they'd be rooting for an NHL or an NBA team. They're still waiting.
In 2004, Kansas City gave the green light to what would eventually become the Sprint Center. The initial cost estimate of $225 million became a final price tag of $276 million (which is not only a warning that Quebec City's price tag may rise, but also a major red flag about the $400-million price tag itself).
Despite the lack of a major league tenant, the arena is doing modestly well with concerts and other events. The revenues don't begin to make up for Kansas City's annual debt servicing costs, but they are higher than had been expected.
The irony is that were Kansas City to lure a pro franchise, they would likely lose out on arena revenue that would be gobbled up by the team.
So Quebec City's best-case scenario of resurrecting the Nordiques might strangely be a worst-case scenario for making money off their investment.
One also has to wonder what leverage Quebec City now has. When your starting position is, "we have an empty arena and we really, really want an NHL team," you're bargaining from a very weak position.
If suddenly an NHL owner offered to move his team to Quebec City, how unlikely is it that the city would not simply hand over the keys to this new arena?
How, then, is this not a very expensive case of corporate welfare?
For now, the federal government isn't on board (although it would dearly like to be), so one could argue that this is something the people of Quebec need to sort out.
However, with the province of Quebec so dependent on transfer payments, such a cavalier use of taxpayer dollars isn't exactly selling the rest of the country on the virtues of equalization. Quebec already spends far more per capita than any other province.
Here in Alberta, we can be thankful for small mercies.
The idea of opening the public purse to construct new NHL arenas would appear to be a total non-starter. Just last week, a spokesman for the premier confirmed there are no plans to directly invest in a new arena in Calgary or Edmonton.
There may still end up being a financial contribution at the municipal level, once, and if, new arenas are built. Hopefully, that contribution will be nowhere near Quebec City's risky financial gambit.
Franchises and facilities for them to play in have a funny way of turning up in places where there's an economic case to be made for them. Take, for example, the privately funded NHL arenas in other Canadian cities.
It isn't the place of government to determine the "need" for such facilities, nor is it the responsibility of taxpayers to be footing the bill for them.

Calgary Herald Column: Don't Unite-the-Right

My latest Calgary Herald column looks at Ted Morton's vision of uniting Alberta's right, and argues why that should not happen:

 

...In his surreal resignation/ campaign launch news conference last week, Morton made it apparent that his focus will be ensuring that the Tories once again enjoy a monopoly on the right of the Alberta political spectrum.
In referring to the Wildrose Alliance, Morton argued that what the two have in common is more important than the differences. Morton then urged Wildrose supporters to return to the PC mother ship.
Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith dismissed Morton's vision as "delusional," and in a subsequent news release, declared that "swapping out the PC leader won't change the fact that this is a government on its last legs." That same news release, however, also acknowledged that many Wildrose Alliance members "were PC supporters and even PC MLAs" and that they had left because "this government stopped listening to Albertans."
In a way, that bolsters the mother ship argument. It further implies that a change in direction could lure back some disaffected Tories.
But even if the possibility exists that the right could be reunited under a Morton-led Progressive Conservative party, there's the separate question of whether it ought to be. For many reasons, the answer should be no.
First, it is very self-serving. What better way to ensure the Tory dynasty survives than by neutralizing your biggest threat?
It's been a very long time since the Alberta Tories have had to face the possibility of losing the next election. There's no reason to absolve them of that fear. As we've seen, without such fear, there exists a fair amount of arrogance.
Second, this is not federal politics. Morton would have conservatives believe that the real danger lies in a potential Liberal victory. But one only has to look at the byelection in Calgary-Glenmore to see how weak the vote splitting argument is.
Moreover, it's hard to see how dramatically different Alberta would have been under Kevin Taft as premier than it was under Ed Stelmach. One would expect a Liberal government to govern from the centre if it wanted to survive in right-of-centre Alberta.
Regardless, the prospect of a Liberal government is remote enough that there's really no reason for any small-c conservatives to lose sleep over the matter.
Third, what exactly are these conservative policies that are imperilled without a return to the mother ship? Morton might be the champion of smaller budgets and Bill 44 (that gives parents the right to pull their children out of class when lessons on religion, sexual orientation or sex are being taught), but that's pretty thin gruel. To begin with, Bill 44 was an atrocious piece of legislation. It may have appealed to some social conservatives, but it's a pretty lousy beacon for the mother ship.
Morton also overlooks or underestimates the anger over other legislation, such as Bill 19, the Land Assembly Project Area Act and Bill 50, a piece of legislation that passed in November 2009, that removes the requirement for public hearings on new power lines. In many ways -- some more than others -- Morton is tied to the decisions of the past four years.
Another major part of the appeal of the Wildrose Alliance is its belief in direct democracy. In all their years of governing, the Alberta Tories have never shown an appetite for such reform, and it's hard to see how they can convincingly make what at this point would seem like a deathbed conversion.
It may well be that under this next leader, the Alberta Progressive Conservative mother ship will return to the political stratosphere. For now, Alberta politics are well served by the threat posed to the Tory dynasty by parties on both the right and left.
Uniting the right suits the Tories just fine, but offers little benefit to anyone else.