Do I hear $45 Million?

There must be an election coming or something. Or maybe Vic Toews is taking the advice of the CCPA and trying to spend our way out of a recession. I don't know what's going on, but in a matter of days we went from "not bloody likely" to $15m-$20m to $30m in possible funding for a new Winnipeg football stadium (I'll call it the "Asper Dome" even though it doesn't have a roof, just 'cause it has a nice ring to it.) With a little more sweet-talking from David, he just might get the 40 mil he's looking for.

There are other bloggers out there who are doing some great commentary on this subject, so I'll keep it short. I am torn on the issue, to be honest. There is a lot of public money at stake, and David Asper could potentially make out like a bandit. He probably has a good chuckle (or possibly an evil laugh) every time his proposal gets one step closer to reality. However, I am a Bomber fan, and I do not like the seating at the current stadium at all. It's way too cramped. If it takes $80 million of tax payer money to make me more comfortable watching a football game, well then, I'm tempted to support it.

I'm just not sure it should take that much money. Policy Frog questioned the price tag a few days ago here, (but keep in mind the project involves concurrently building the new stadium and tearing down the old one on the same site, which has to add cost.) There has also been some questions about the process that selected the Asper Dome. Nobody seems to know what the decision-making criteria was in selecting that option over the Ledohowski vision. So all I'm trying to say here is, if we're going to dump a bunch of tax dollars into this project, give us details and make the process transparent so that we we have some idea if we're getting decent value for our money.