You can't go to a pub, place of work or playground without talk turning to BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie's bid to bring the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton, or somewhere nearby (even Burlington's name has been mentioned, though no one takes that seriously). Even a pro-sport
s-optional type like me has been swept up in the excitement. But the honeymoon was short-lived. After a few days of breathless, wall-to-wall coverage of the cage match between Balsillie and National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman, talk turned to cold, hard cash. Not theirs, but yours and mine. Last week, Balsillie said he would seek taxpayer dollars from the province and Ottawa to pay for a $150-million renovation of Copps Coliseum to bring the arena up to NHL standards. That's when my flirtation with hockey ended. Here's the deal: I'm tired of corporations with their hand out for public money (and the list is long, these days) while simultaneously demanding tax cuts. It's brazen to seek money from a system you're trying to gut. I'm tired of the popular mythology that private corporations can run anything better than governments. Governments have red tape and far too much political decision-making, as opposed to community decision- making, to be sure. But corporations have bankruptcies, layoffs, gross inequities between pay for line workers and head honchos and most troubling, in too many cases, little or no regard for the public good, which is shoved aside in pursuit of the almighty profit margin.
s-optional type like me has been swept up in the excitement. But the honeymoon was short-lived. After a few days of breathless, wall-to-wall coverage of the cage match between Balsillie and National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman, talk turned to cold, hard cash. Not theirs, but yours and mine. Last week, Balsillie said he would seek taxpayer dollars from the province and Ottawa to pay for a $150-million renovation of Copps Coliseum to bring the arena up to NHL standards. That's when my flirtation with hockey ended. Here's the deal: I'm tired of corporations with their hand out for public money (and the list is long, these days) while simultaneously demanding tax cuts. It's brazen to seek money from a system you're trying to gut. I'm tired of the popular mythology that private corporations can run anything better than governments. Governments have red tape and far too much political decision-making, as opposed to community decision- making, to be sure. But corporations have bankruptcies, layoffs, gross inequities between pay for line workers and head honchos and most troubling, in too many cases, little or no regard for the public good, which is shoved aside in pursuit of the almighty profit margin.Source : http://www.thesudburystar.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1573125
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