To the editor:
I am writing in response to your article earlier this month – “Support Shown,” regarding the Ipsos-Reid survey on the event centre.
In this article, you report: “Coun. Aldo Ruberto said the survey was done to prove to ‘naysayers’ that there is support for an event centre in the city.”
It is legitimate for the city to commission a non-partisan survey for purposes of developing public policy. You can go to the public coffers for that.
But here we are more than halfway through the administrative process to build an event centre that council has voted to support in what is certainly the hot button issue of this election.
In addition, we have passed the election’s half-way mark, and council commissioned a publically funded poll which, from Mr. Ruberto’s statement, appears to have been triggered by the desire to frustrate opposition to the facility.
We know it wasn’t to help elected representatives or administration to decide whether or not to support the initiative, because their support was already a matter of record.
Where was the public policy imperative for this poll? Mr. Ruberto continues: “The naysayers sometimes cost us money in the long run … It’s very frustrating sometimes.”
Mr. Ruberto is right. It is very expensive. And he appears again to link the survey to the political opposition to the facility.
The cost of the earlier Ipsos-Reid infrastructure tax survey was only $11,500. Council authorized more than $40,000 this time.
If this is a political poll, which in my view it clearly is, commissioned to shore-up incumbents’ re-election efforts, we expect the bill should be handed to each incumbent to be divided equally and reported as an election expense.
Should taxpayers be responsible for the costs of the opinion survey?
Is the analysis fact or PR bluster? These are questions worthy of taxpayers’ consideration. Now it seems, the opinion survey itself is an election issue.
William Olesky,
Thunder Bay
