A Hockey Arena in Every Pot & The Return of Maxime Bernier

If I don't write about it for a couple of months, I tend to forget how much I truly despise the Conservative government of Stephen Harper. And the more I think about it, the harder it is to remember why the Martin Liberals got their asses kicked so thoroughly four years ago. Harper has thrown more money down the rathole than any Canadian government since Trudeau's.

Moreover, it isn't like Harper was lying during the '05-06 campaign. He actually said that he was going waste tons of money on politically desirable nonsense. "Want a federally subsidized babysitter, folks? I'm your guy!" "Thinking of buying junior some new goalie pads? Let Canada's next government make it deductible!"

Most Tories don't like to admit this, but Stephen Harper had plowed through the $13 billion budget surplus left behind by the Liberals and Canada was on the brink of a deficit before the Great Recession paid us a visit. He managed to make $13 billion disappear and had absolutely nothing to show for it. And for what? So that he might properly defeat Stephane Dion, who everyone agrees was the worst politician in human history.

The worst part is that he ain't done yet. Not by a long shot. Or a slap-shot.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday that if his government agrees to spend millions of dollars to help build an NHL hockey arena in Quebec City, it will be duty-bound to provide similar support for sporting facilities in the rest of the country.

Harper is under pressure to provide the funds to help seal the return of a National Hockey League team to Quebec City, where the Conservatives have had their strongest showings in Quebec in recent elections. At the same time, he risks a backlash in the rest of Canada — and could spark internal dissent among western MPs in his caucus over the issue — if he moves too rapidly and appears to give preferential treatment to Quebec at a time when the government is battling a massive deficit.

The lobbying efforts intensified earlier this week, when Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s government announced it will pay 45% of the construction costs of a projected $400-million arena. Charest said a feasibility study for an 18,000-seat arena showed it would be profitable and he turned up the pressure on the Harper government to come up with an additional 45% — an estimated $175-million — needed to build the arena.

A new arena is key for an NHL return to Quebec City as NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has said the project would need to be completed before the league brings a team back to the city, which was home to the Quebec Nordiques until 1995.

(...)


Although the prime minister shut the door on directly funding pro teams, his government could still finance the Quebec arena using infrastructure funds. Harper noted that there are “demands,” not only in Quebec City, but also other Canadian cities to finance major sports facilities.

“You know, in terms of financing any of these things going forward, we’re going to have to respect the precedents we had in the past and be sure any treatment we’re prepared to give to one major city we’re prepared to give to all,” he said. “Obviously we’ll be looking at our options in that context.”

Beyond funding the Quebec City arena, Harper is facing questions about whether he will provide money to build a new stadium for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

“Whatever we do in these two cities, we have to be prepared to do everywhere,” Harper said. “Ultimately, professional sports teams themselves have to be sound business propositions.”

You know, few things drive me up the wall as quickly or as cartoonishly as taxpayer subsidized sports arenas and stadiums. Not only is that a direct subsidy to private business, it's a subsidy to protected monopolies, which most leagues are. Try, for example to start your own professional baseball league. You'll quickly learn that the anti-trust laws don't apply to your prospective competitors.

Few things are as profitable as professional sports. Almost all of the leagues have some kind of payroll cap for the players, but no cap on what they can charge for seats, shitty hot dogs and warm beer. Hockey is profitable in California, for Christ's sake. If you manage to lose money on a sports team, you're well and truly gifted.

So fuck 'em. Let them build their own stadiums and arenas. As a matter of fact, every major municipality in North America should come to some kind of agreement that they will not infuse taxpayer money into them. If, for example, the NHL can't survive without being subsidized to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, along with a prized anti-trust exemption, then it probably shouldn't survive.

It makes me insane when liberals and socialists pull this stunt, and I'm twice as enraged when so-called conservatives do it.

There's only one person in the entire Conservative caucus who's willing to stand up and cry "bullshit" at the top of his lungs, and he's actually from the Quebec City area. Unfortunately, it happens to be Maxime Bernier.

If you're Canadian, you remember Monsieur Bernier. In 2006, he won the biggest victory of any Conservative candidate east of Manitoba. With a win like that, it's almost impossible not to find yourself in Cabinet. In August of 2007, he was named Minister for Foreign Affairs, which is where his story gets really interesting.

You see, Maxime took his then-girlfriend, Julie Couillard, to his swearing-in at Rideau Hall and took great pains to ensure that her breathtakingly beautiful boobies were hanging out.

The fact that Mademoiselle Couillard had a long and storied history of fucking bikers made her even more fetching and caused me to admire Bernier's thinking. He sure had a bright future ahead of him.

Well, he did. At least until he forgot some classified NATO documents at Julie's apartment ... for a couple of weeks. Being essentially a sexless cyborg, Stephen Harper isn't known to appreciate the hypnotizing power of a superior set of jugs and he immediately removed Bernier from Cabinet, to which he hasn't returned.

However, Bernier has a cachet that Harper doesn't. He won in a huge way in a province that the Tories have to keep at least ten seats in to maintain even the illusion of power. The prime minister could be trapped in a coal mine and it take about six months for your average Quebecois to even notice, if not actually care. But they loves them some Maxime Bernier.

That allows Bernier to say things like this;

We cannot continue in this way to pass on to our children the bills for all the projects that we cannot afford to pay ourselves. We cannot continue to distribute ever larger amounts of money to please everyone and buy social peace, while refusing to face the consequences. We cannot ask governments to manage our money in a responsible manner while at the same time demanding that they devote some more money to an irresponsible venture that will benefit us.

I too share the dream of again seeing a professional hockey team come back to play in our region and I sincerely hope that a way will be found to make this dream come true. But dreaming does not make the hard financial reality go away. It’s nice to have dreams, but when you use borrowed money to achieve them and act as if money grows on trees, you may have a brutal awakening. For all these reasons, I cannot in good conscience support this project.

That's every bit as ballsy at it looks, teenagers. Not only is ol' Max calling his own party a pantload of unprincipled Marxists, he's doing it while opposing a highly popular project in his own backyard. That's either the bravest thing I've ever seen in politics or the fucking craziest.

It's also as a good an indication as any that Bernier's running an unofficial leadership campaign right under Harper's nose. Actually, Max has been travelling around the country, implicitly criticizing government policy and building credibility with the more libertarian wing of the party for about a year now. That tells me that he's either setting himself up to succeed Harper or he's trying win Julie Couillard back, both of which are noble pursuits. By the way, have you seen those titties? C'est Magnifique!

So why does Harper - who isn't exactly celebrated for his tolerance of much of anything - put up with it? Well, he doesn't have much of a choice. Harper needs Bernier a whole more than Bernier needs Harper and pretty much everyone knows it. Maxime knows Quebec, something that's in short supply in the PMO and the larger caucus. If Harper expelled Bernier, Bernier would be free to openly organize against Harper, which is never good when you only have a minority government.

Most serious people don't see Harper sticking around to head a third minority government or holding on to the leadership if the Conservatives get beaten by a genetic loser like Michael Ignatieff. The more likely scenario is a third minority, if only because Ignatieff is biologically programmed to lose. Had Iggy remained at Harvard, I have no doubt that it would be a community college by now.

Either way that means that there's going to be a leadership race in the next couple of years, and Bernier will be at least two years ahead of everyone else in organizing his campaign. More likely than not, he'll have every Quebec power broker and most of the province's caucus on his side, which is going to make him formidable.

Then there's the history to consider. Quebec is pretty much the last place that the Conservative Party has any growth potential at all. Unless they can snag some seats from the Bloc and - more likely - the Liberals, they'll never win a majority. That's going to require a leader from Quebec, and Bernier's the only person positioned to be that leader. Under Brian Mulroney, the Tories won two-thirds of Quebec's seats. They haven't won even a seventh of them since 1988.

I would strongly suggest that every political watcher in the country keep a close eye on Maxime Bernier. I'd do it, but I'm preoccupied with Julie Couillard.