Quote:
Originally Posted by calgarygeologist
If there is anything shady or unfavorable in this deal I'm pretty certain it involves the Stampede and I doubt that it is anything that the Province would be writing into the deal or have any control over. While the province is kicking in a big chunk of cash I don't think they had much involvement in the overall structure of the deal which would be between the City, CSEC and Stampede. When all is revealed I think the people we will be upset with are the city reps and Council as opposed to the province and Smith.
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The Stampede stuff sounds like random conjecture, but I think the bolded is probably spot on. I'd still argue it's bad faith political opportunism from the provincial gov't that rushed a clearly incomplete and generally poor deal to the announcement stage. It's not dissimilar to how a federal gov't election promise lead to a completely unrealistic budget/scope for the Green Line announcement.
"Here's $330M conditional on an announcement by April 25. If you don't do it the money is off the table whether we win or lose, and you know it's unlikely the NDP would link funding to the arena like this."
I can see why the city might bend to this ultimatum and sign a bad deal, as the alternative is trying to squeeze $330M out of CSEC and/or the next provincial gov't (which could mean an even more hostile UCP gov't if they don't play ball here).
So the city will end up wearing this #### deal, but IMO it is because they were backed into a corner by a gov't who has no interest in quality governance.