To the editor:
The final chapter on the event centre has not been written. Climbing from the crumbling wreckage of this public policy fiasco, it appears municipal officials and their advocates, including some in the media, have decided to continue the exercise in the same fashion it has been conducted throughout – in acrimony.
We recall those expressing concern over the ill-fated undertaking were dismissed as uninformed, negative, mostly seniors, and fear mongers. Now, as the community’s principal objection to the project (that there was no federal funding program to plug into) has proved exactly and factually correct, city hall’s propaganda machine has leaped again into action.
This time it is the federal government’s turn to be publically pilloried. The stakes are high.
This is a desperate action to preserve some shred of credibility for city officials. There is a new narrative in town, more rash in tone: the government of Canada has insulted the citizens of Thunder Bay. Our Mayor, council and bureaucrats have received “grubby” treatment at their hands.
As well, the feds are guilty of inconsistency, playing favourites, and politically motivated decision making.
Lately the rhetoric has ramped-up. Ottawa it appears has been duplicitous.
We should be angry that citizens of Thunder Bay have been “strung along” all these years, and that Ottawa is dictating this community’s infrastructure priorities.
The prime minister is responsible. The bullying, name-calling and marginalizing continues. The PR machine resembles a snarling, menacing junkyard dog this time, but it won’t work.
This isn’t the way to win over the Government of Canada, and our eyes are not diverted from council’s spectacularly senseless approach to replacing the Fort William Gardens. As mayoral candidate Ken Boshcoff indicated in the election debates, the whole plan was based on the assumption that Ottawa would change a national policy for one city.
It is not my place to defend the government of Canada.
They have already corrected certain published errors in fact in the local media, and a federal minister has stepped in to express his incredulity at certain city officials’ public statements.
The feds do not have the capacity, however, to get the same breadth of local coverage municipal governments have.
That is true everywhere. I can only say that Building Canada documents specifically state “Facilities used primarily by professional or major junior athletes are not eligible for funding.”
In other words, the federal taxpayer is not in the business of subsidizing millionaire owners of NHL/AHL hockey teams.
That is becoming the gold standard for public funding across Canada. That our city officials will, and with our tax base, is another story. Regardless, millions of dollars and countless person hours have been wasted. Some elements in the local media should take their share of blame for this embarrassment.
With consultants and PR brought in from other communities, telling their stories about their “vision” for Thunder Bay, drawing nice pictures, and filling everyone with dreams of AHL hockey, an events centre full of concerts and conventions, a dock for cruise ships, a five-star boutique hotel, a waterpark, a new art gallery, and a downtown/harbour to be a world-class tourist destination, the only people lending a word of caution were treated little better than troublemakers in some media.
When the city declared Prince Arthurs Landing went millions over budget because, as city manager Tim Commisso stated, city bureaucrats were being “unrealistic”, much of the media benignly looked the other way. It was the go ahead for the embarrassing, unrealistic, unaccountable “fingers crossed” public policy we see in city hall today.
We deserve better from the mayor and city manager. How many times did they pledge that that, if senior funding weren’t there, the event centre wouldn’t go ahead?
All the while, they had no reason to believe it would be funded – at least not by the government of Canada, a point FedNor Minister Greg Rickford made very clear.
When news got into the blogosphere that the money wasn’t there, the city had no choice but to arrange a hasty press conference to disclose what by then had become public domain.
We expected the mayor to express his disappointment and thank all those who worked hard on the project’s behalf, and then to say some words about going back to the honourable work of running the city.
He would have kept his word, and gained the respect of the entire community, if not their sympathy. Instead, we got the gunslinger that won’t go down without a fight – and another broken election promise.
What are we left with?
City hall has Balkanized the city north vs. south and young versus old.
We see a divided council, and the alienation of senior governments. We have a rob Peter to pay Paul planning process, and suffer through fiscal shell games.
There are striking similarities here to the ODRAP fiasco where, again, city officials created a crisis through their inability or unwillingness to read critical but uncomplicated documents set before them. Instead, they saw only what they wanted to see.
The final chapter of the event centre has not been written, but wherever city planning goes, chaos and bewilderment seem sure to follow.
William Olesky,
Thunder Bay
