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Monday, December 6, 1999
Tax break appetite never sated
It will never be enough. Rod Bryden, owner of the Ottawa Senators, has put the team up for sale. He is the most active and vocal of the Canadian franchise holders in the NHL in pursuit of tax breaks to keep his franchise in Canada.
After much complaining about how unfairly Canadian teams are treated in the tax department, Bryden got some of what he wanted. He got the city of Kanata and the regional government in Ottawa to give him a tax break.
Now he says that unless the federal government chips in with a tax reduction of between $3.7 million and $5 million, he can't survive.
If he gets that break, everything will be fine for a least a year before Ottawa finds out it still can't compete with the bigger American teams and asks for another tax break. When that isn't forthcoming, Bryden still will be forced to sell the team to someone in the U.S. for $170 million US or so (the Senators came into the league five years ago for $50 million) and the team will be moved. Remember the Winnipeg Jets?
Now it's easy for the media in cities like Ottawa to get all worked up and demand the government do something to keep the Senators in Ottawa. After all, having an NHL team in the city is a good gig for most media outlets.
Case in point. They love to argue that the government gives breaks to all sorts of other businesses. One columnist even brought up the subject of the government's deal with Japanese car manufacturers and the incentives the government provides to them.
Maybe we should try comparing oranges to oranges.
The auto industry employs thousands and thousands of workers at a more than decent wage with great benefits. Compare that to 200 jobs selling hot dogs and popcorn twice a week at a minimum wage job with no benefits. Where would the government and taxpayers' best interest be served in protecting jobs with financial incentives?
And let's not forget the economic spinoff argument. If you lose the team, you lose the money that team brings into a community, we're told. One wonders what kind of economic spinoff there is, other than the owner's pocket.
The reality is that businesses in the free world start up and close every day. Many face tough tax burdens. Those that are operated well manage to survive. And most of those business have to compete with other businesses in a free market.
The NHL owns a monopoly. As a league, they can fix what's wrong. But the Senators' brothers in greed simply don't want to do it. They want you, the taxpayers, to do it.
If the NHL really cared about the Canadian franchises, they'd consider a true system of sharing profits to keep them in the league. As for the players, if they really cared, they'd look at some sort of fiscal responsibility such as a salary cap.
If you weren't laughing before, that last little bit should have you on the floor. Imagine asking the employees and employers to do something to help their own business. How preposterous.
The NHL doesn't care whether Ottawa plays in Ottawa or whether it plays in Portland or Hickory Hollow, Ms. Certainly the players don't care, as long as they don't lose anything from their big, fat salaries.
It's so easy to criticize the Canadian government and Canadian taxpayers for not running to the defence of professional hockey owners. But how can anyone feel sympathy for a group that refuses to help itself?
Our hearts haven't completely turned to stone. Whatever breaks the local regional and municipal government want to give the Senators, or other NHL teams in their cities, is just fine. If the teams can work something out with all levels of governments in the form of a lottery, betting or otherwise, that's great as well. Those who really want to use their money to support a professional hockey franchise are then free to do so.
And that's a lot more help than the average, struggling, independent, work-your-butt-off-every-day business owner will ever get.
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