The Long March, Manitoba edition?

After reading several posts (see Mary Agnes Welch, PolicyFrog and Hacks and Wonks) lamenting the number of Manitoba athletes in Beijing (just two, compared to at least 11 for Saskatchewan), I decided to see if I could find comparable numbers for past Olympic Games.

The most recent games were the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy. I couldn't find a regional breakdown of all of the athletes, but looking at the medal count, I came up with:

4 medals awarded to Alberta athletes;
5 awarded to Manitoba athletes;
3 awarded to Ontario athletes;
3 awarded to Quebec athletes; and
9 awarded jointly to Canadian teams,
for a total of 24.

If we look at the regional composition of each team that received a medal, we find that the teams break out as follows: 1 team of predominantly Newfoundland and Labrador athletes, 1 largely Ontario, 1 Alberta, 2 Quebec, 1 Manitoba, 1 AB-BC tie, and 2 AB-SK tie. That gives us the following approximate medal count totals:

AB: 6.5
MB: 6
QC: 5
ON: 4
SK: 1
NL: 1
BC: 0.5

Total: 24

Based on medal count, it looks like it was Saskatchewan's turn to take the lumps last time, with a measly one medal (actually one bronze and one silver shared jointly with Alberta athletes) compared to Manitoba's six medals, including two gold, for the best per-capita take in the country. And athletes from BC, who'll host the Olympics in 2010, barely even registered on the map.

I'd like to chalk up the Summer Olympics-Winter Olympics difference to Manitoba having a comparative advantage in winter itself, but ... oh wait ... Saskatchewan also has an abundance of winter.

When looking at the above numbers, some might point out that the medal take by province is a whole different ball game (sorry) than the number of athletes participating in the games by province. That's absolutely true, but taking medals is what the Games are all about, n'est-ce pas?

No matter your opinion, I think taking numbers of athletes by province from one Olympic Games gives us far too small of a sample size to make conclusive statements about the health of sports in one province relative to another. However, if someone wants to pool the data from across, say, ten Olympic Games, maybe there'd be an interesting argument to make. Until then, I think it's safe to say that athletes -- no matter what part of the country they're in -- could use more funding and better facilities.

We may only have two this time around, but they'll compete like a thousand!

Photo: Bird's Nest, Beijing National Stadium

New Winnipeg stadium: city boon or public bilk?

Photo: Montreal's Olympic Stadium

Quite interesting is the recently reported poll on whether Manitobans would support public funding for a new Winnipeg Blue Bombers stadium.

The proposal, as it now stands, calls for the provincial and federal governments together to put up $40 million, which would match the $40 million being put up by private investors. According to the Probe/Jory Capital poll reported in today’s Free Press, 50% oppose (32% strongly, 18% somewhat) while 43% support (20% strongly, 23% somewhat) the use of government monies for the new stadium.

The poll comes only days after yet more evidence questioning the value that public funding of such projects have for the city in which they are built. Academics Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys report in their recent article (kudos to Richard Florida for his blog's link and discussion) that, “in stark contrast to the results claimed by most prospective economic impact studies commissioned by teams or stadium advocates, the consensus in the academic literature has been that the overall sports environment has no measurable effect on the level of real income in metropolitan areas. Our own research suggests that professional sports may be a drain on local economies rather than an engine of economic growth.”

An economic impact study of the Winnipeg stadium project apparently projects $17 million dollars in tax revenue for the province from the construction alone. Being no stranger to economic impact studies, I find that figure to be suspiciously high for an $80 million project. Coates and Humphreys would probably agree: they note in their article that “the results of these studies invariably reflect the desires of those who commission them, and advocates of stadiums and franchises typically produce impact studies that find large economic impacts, translated as benefits, from building a stadium or enticing a team to enter the city.” They go on to describe a number of flaws typically associated with such studies.

The debate is similar to the one that followed the demise of the Winnipeg Jets team and the subsequent True North/MTS Centre arena construction. Some of this is chronicled in Thin Ice, a book by Jim Silver, who took the position that no public money should go to fund luxuries such as professional sports when our society faces far more pressing needs. Personally, I think the MTS Centre is a beautiful, amazing and highly successful arena, though I wonder whether the economic and civic pride spin-offs of that project even come close to balancing against the $40.5 million contributed by taxpayers.

In the case of the current proposed stadium project, it will of course be incumbent upon the promoters of the stadium to prove that the project is worth the input of public funds. We should be open to an investment of public money into an asset that will be cherished and used by the province’s citizens, but certainly not to corporate welfare for the Asper clan. In other words, let’s not rely on a questionable economic impact study funded by the very folks who stand to gain from the development.

There should certainly also be a cap on the public’s contribution, a lesson learned most harshly by Montreal in the construction of their Olympic Stadium: built for the 1972 Olympics for a projected public contribution of $120 million, the project was finally only fully paid for in 2006, for a total tab of $1.47 billion.

The public debate over this project should be far more than just about the money invested, too. As our Premier noted in his response to the poll, a critical piece of the public debate is about whether the provincial government should enter into a public-private partnership with Asper, an issue the poll questions didn’t even touch upon. We certainly don’t want an arrangement whereby the private owners who run the stadium reap the bulk of the project’s rewards while the public sector bears the bulk of the project’s risks.