The Written Word
for August 30, 2000

The federal government, as of January 2000, backed away from financing NHL franchises and thus sliding down a slippery slope from which there is no return. It was proposed that $15 Million, per year, go to the six NHL teams as a bailout, this being ¼ of the $60 million they collectively go in the hole. It’s been suggested that the provinces allocate some of the money they receive from lotteries to the teams. Moreover, the Federal government was looking for ways to allow the teams to accelerate depreciation on their buildings.

The issue remains alive as the Montreal Canadiens are for sale, Calgary, Edmonton and Ottawa struggle as, perhaps do the Canucks. But the issue remains simply this – does the ordinary taxpayer have any obligation to bail out professional hockey teams with the immense salaries they pay players?

The NHL makes its case based upon the amount of employment it creates, the wages it pays, and the taxes they and their employees pay – and the numbers are big. But surely we should put some facts on the table.

Whether you use lottery money, increase the ability to depreciate or make an outright gift, it’s taxpayers moneys that would otherwise go elsewhere. I think it’s vitally important that we keep that in the front of our minds for however you slice it, those people who need the money won’t get it because it’s gone elsewhere.

And where is that elsewhere? To teams whose average player makes well over a million dollars a year. And to support a league which won’t do the baling out themselves, by equalizing gate and TV revenues.

Let’s deal with the employment argument. Many of you are business people, small, medium and large. Has the government offered to bail you out so you won’t have to lay off employees or take a cut yourself? And how do you feel when the bailout is of a big pulp mill which the marketplace can’t sustain? For surely there must be a principle here – if Ottawa is going to bail out any industries which are losing money, surely it must bail out all. Moreover, if all NHL teams went bust, there would still be hockey played. It might not be NHL hockey to be sure, but there would be teams. The losses sustained to the economy would be there but not as much as the NHL says.

The long and the short of it is that we are being asked to pay tax money to multi-millionaire owners with multi-millionaire employees.

Now one of the biggest complainers is the Ottawa franchise. Well, the brutal fact is that Ottawa shouldn’t have had a franchise in the first place. Neither should Calgary and Edmonton – perhaps that list includes Vancouver. The local markets in these places is not large enough to support NHL teams at the salaries they’ve agreed to pay.

But let’s deal with the emotional issue. This is our national game (forget it lacrosse fans, it is hockey) and we’ll lose a lot of what makes up Canada and what keeps it together if we lose our NHL teams. I personally think that’s a lot of rubbish. Until 1971 there were only two NHL teams, both in the east, and fans of each team loathed, indeed hated the guts of the other. It wasn’t just a team one was cheering for, but a lot of political, and indeed racial beliefs as well. It made my holiday last year when I learned that Toronto had been knocked out of the playoffs.

I think hockey is a great game but I find it hard to believe that the NHL which charges brutal prices for its games, has a schedule so long that even teams that don’t make the playoffs are playing when summer has arrived, and which has absolutely no intention of helping itself, can be the glue that holds Canada together. Is it seriously put forward that Buffalo playing Dallas is a Canadian game bringing Canadians together?

One doesn’t have to be a maths major to know that with 26 teams, and six of them Canadian, the odds of two Canadian teams meeting for the Stanley Cup ever again are as remote as being hit by lightning. Indeed, even with government money, Canadian teams will never be able to really compete again … we’re all destined to be the Minnesota Twins of Hockey.

The cold hard truth is that big league hockey was doomed in this country the moment of the first expansion back in 1967. Probably expansion to the States in a big way had to happen. But from that moment on, it was just a matter of time before Canada’s teams were in jeopardy if only because of this Catch-22 ... in order to survive, the NHL had to sell the game to the big American market and to do that, American teams had to do well. The better the American teams did, the more money they took and the higher the wages went. And the greater the burden teams in smaller markets had to bear.

I think it’s awful that we may lose even more Canadian cities – remember we’ve already lost Quebec and Winnipeg. But I say that any money, be it by grant, diversion of lottery money, of tax write-offs will be money peed down a rathole. The very best it can do is stave off inevitable disasters by subsidizing what is a foreign hockey league.

Moreover, the vast majority of us can’t afford to take our families to a hockey game so why should our tax dollars go to subsidize those who can?

Call me the Canadian grinch if you will but if Ottawa and Victoria subsidize NHL teams they will only be postponing the inevitable so that the rich can afford to go to hockey games owned by the rich to watch the rich play what used to be a game for everyone.