Silence is deafening on stadium debt

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/07/2018 (2800 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Well, look who’s NOT talking now.

It’s anything but a surprise to learn that last week’s revelation of the dire debt-writeoff situation associated with Investors Group Field (IGF) was met by silence from the individuals most closely associated with the stadium project during its planning and construction stages.

At the time, they were very public figures — former premier Greg Selinger and former mayor Sam Katz, who were central in the handshaking and back-slapping phase of IGF development — but each has since left politics and assumed a much less public profile. No longer elected officials, they have remained mostly silent as questions swirl about how Manitoba taxpayers ended up on the hook for more than $100 million in stadium-related costs.

Mr. Selinger did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and Mr. Katz characterized the Free Press’s coverage as an “attempt to rewrite history,” but offered no further public comment on the debt-writeoff situation.

At issue is the revelation that a large portion of the initial $160-million loan to finance IGF’s construction, which was to have been paid by city and provincial taxes generated from redevelopment of the old stadium site near Polo Park, will be written off because there is no realistic hope it can be recovered.

In a two-phase loan-repayment process, $85 million was to have been paid back via the aforementioned tax increment financing arrangement. With accumulated interest, that unpaid debt has ballooned to $118.7 million, according to the financial report from the University of Manitoba, which is the site of the stadium and a partner (along with the city, province and Winnipeg Football Club) in stadium-ownership consortium Triple B Stadium Inc.

(The football club has kept up with payments on its $75-million portion of the loan.)

The original, wildly optimistic vision for the multi-layered scheme would have seen the former stadium site fully redeveloped by 2019; instead, the area remains 90 per cent underdeveloped and shows little potential of becoming a tax-revenue generator any time soon.

As a result, and in keeping with what the project’s naysayers were warning long before IGF’s 2013 opening, taxpayers are left holding the red-ink-stained bag.

Also in the “hardly surprising” category is how quickly the current provincial government has sought to make political hay at the original IGF proponents’ expense. Unlike Mr. Selinger and Mr. Katz, Finance Minister Cameron Friesen was quick to comment, describing the financing as “an overly complex and confusing plan” and “a deliberate plan to understate the actual financial obligation of the province to the project.”

The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba took to social media, posting links to a web page festooned with images of Mr. Selinger and current Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew, describing “The NDP’s football stadium scandal” and inviting visitors to sign up as volunteers in the effort to keep New Democrats in the political hinterland.

The jabs by Mr. Friesen and his PC contemporaries are bound to buoy the spirits of the party faithful, but they are of little value in the pursuit of answers about how and why the stadium deal has gone so egregiously awry. Rather than gleefully employing the issue as a political pinata, perhaps the government should ponder its options for a formal investigation or inquiry.

In order to understand how things unravelled, Manitobans need to hear directly from the people who put the deal together and pushed forward with the controversial project despite the numerous red flags raised at every stage of its development.

Mr. Selinger? Mr. Katz? Anyone?