Bread, circuses, and bubbles
Do not be swayed by David Asper
Jesse Beach, Volunteer Staff
Ever since that fitful day on Jan. 14, 2007, the day David Asper proposed to purchase the Winnipeg Blue Bombers from their rightful owners — the fans — I have done everything in my power to stop it. That is to say, of course, that I whine and complain each morning over my coffee and paper to anyone who will listen. I was one of the few who was not overjoyed to hear that our beloved team would be soon snatched up by the sinister hands of private ownership, the very same kind of ownership that led to not only the destruction of the late Ottawa Renegades franchise but contributed to the recent ineptitude of the Hamilton Tiger Cats as well. I seemed to be a lone voice among loud cries for nicer seats, modernized equipment, and the long overdue destruction of the men’s room trough.
For those who do not know, Asper is offering to pay $40 million of the $120-million cost for a brand-new stadium. In addition, he would also contribute $25 million to an adjacent commercial development, a permanent Blue Bomber Hall of Fame, and a new Blue Bomber Touchdown Foundation to support amateur football and important community charities. In exchange for his contributions, Asper expects the remaining $80 million to come from the provincial and federal governments and $35-million worth of prime real estate from the city. Oh, and he also wants the ownership of the team to be transferred to him.
However, it has been a year now since Asper first pitched his proposal and, until recently, he was no closer to becoming the sole owner of the Bombers than I was. Though his plan was met with astonishing approval from the public, who seem quite willing to part with a 78-year legacy of community ownership, Asper has met staunch opposition from all three levels of government from whom he expects funds. Manitoba Premier Gary Doer has been indifferent to the idea at best, while Manitoba’s senior minister, Vic Toews, has stated that any federal funds that go into the stadium would have to come out of the Building Canada Fund — money earmarked for street and sewer repair. Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz, while enthusiastically pledging to donate the required real estate, claims he cannot support the stadium project if it means cutting into street and sewer repair funds.
Slapped back into reality by our elected officials, the general public began to question the true value of Asper’s proposal. Faced with a choice between a new stadium that would be the site of eight home games a year or the maintenance of our roads and sewers, the ever-demanding public began to request more of Asper before we give up so much of ourselves to him. The most extreme of these demands seemed to be that Asper contribute half of the cost of a new stadium, not merely the third that he originally proposed.
In response to this long overdue wave of criticism from the public, Asper created a new aspect to his proposal in order to sway the minds of the public and politicians alike — a bubble. One of the main objections to Asper’s request for such an inordinate amount of money was that the proposed stadium would only be used for a small portion of the year. Therefore, rather than building a domed stadium, as was widely mentioned by fans and players alike, Asper introduced a plan for an immense inflatable bubble that would potentially make the new stadium available for year-round use. The most tempting part of Asper’s new plan is that he would make the bubble available for use to amateur sports teams in the winter months, for sports such as soccer and lacrosse leagues. In this deal, Asper would assume the cost for the maintenance of the bubble and rent out the field to amateur teams and clubs based on the community’s ability to pay. This seemingly generous act of philanthropy to aid amateur sports in various communities around the city is a much more admirable goal than his quest to take over the Bomber organization from those same communities.
So generous, some say, that it has begun to sway the minds of some naysayers. Joy Smith, MP for Kildonan-St. Paul, has been quoted in the Winnipeg Free Press as being a big supporter of a new stadium and is on a personal quest to find sources of federal funding other than the Building Canada Fund, even speaking to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty about other options. Both Smith and Mayor Sam Katz have said that the bubble and Asper’s commitment to community involvement improves the proposal, while the Free Press reports Premier Gary Doer as calling the bubble “a very big step in the right direction.” Meanwhile, the office of Vic Toews remains unmoved and refuses to change their position on the matter. Thankfully, Toews seems to be the only one with an accurate sense of David Asper’s motives.
No one should be fooled into seeing this new proposal as anything more than it really is: a relatively cheap way for Asper to gain control of the team that he covets. The public hears this new proposal and is so swayed by the charitable aspects of it that they forget that the bubble is only a $1.8-million investment in a $120-million project. However, by emphasizing the bubble’s benefits, Asper has successfully quieted notions that he should be responsible for at least half of the stadiums cost. Combine this with Joy Smith’s sudden assertion that there are other avenues for federal funding than the treasured Building Canada Fund and Asper has becoming infinitely closer to the Bombers head office with a relatively insignificant investment of $1.8 million.
It is not my intention to strip the nobility out of David Asper’s attempts to support amateur athletics within the community. Nor can I deny the demand for the new stadium and amateur sports complex that Asper is working so hard to provide. However, the calculated way he is going about it seems unnecessarily underhanded. The bubble proposal was hardly a spur of the moment response to public criticism; it was a well-researched, impeccably planned model that has obviously been in the making for quite some time. It is even conceivable that it had been planned for at the time of Asper’s original proposal one year ago. Asper has been sitting on it, waiting for the time to unveil it in response to the inevitable criticism; that is, the inevitable suggestions that he put up more of his own money into a project from which he will reap all the rewards and profits.
What else is Asper holding up his sleeve? How much is this man secretly willing to contribute in order to take control of our community’s football club? And how much will the government inevitably contribute because the public was too focused on nicer seating accommodations to question how much our team is worth to this calculating businessman?
Jesse Beach is a fourth-year English student.
