In a country that is desperate to build new hockey rinks and football stadiums, we continue to waste $1 billion a year on the CBC.
Now, there was definitely a time when this nation needed the CBC, but that time has long passed. As a Junior Hockey broadcaster who sends plenty of time in the north, the existence of the CBC has become meaningless in this country. The people in remote parts of Canada now have satellite dishes and internet connections and more often than not, the CBC is ignored in these once forgotten towns. Frankly, the CBC is as meaningless to remote communities as it is to the country’s major centres (check the national ratings, other than Hockey Night in Canada, not many Canadians are watching the CBC).
That’s why the comments made by Hockey Night in Canada bingo caller Glenn Healy just pissed me off last week. Healy, who is certainly a mouthpiece for the NHLPA and therefore has some ties to the league’s union members, claimed that NHL players are now telling their owners that they won’t accept a trade to Atlanta because the Thrashers might — in the next decade, perhaps — move to Winnipeg.
What an incredibly absurd statement.
Healy seemed to suggest that players don’t want to go to Atlanta because there are rumours on top of rumours hinting that maybe the Thrashers are finished as a franchise and are headed to Winnipeg, oh, next week — even though they just gave GM Rick Dudley a contract extension.
Here’s Healy’s quote: “Guess what name is appearing on a lot of players’ no-move teams? Atlanta. Why? Because if the team goes to Winnipeg, it’s not a desirable place for them to play their winters.”
And Pittsburgh, Edmonton and Detroit are desirable? What a crock. Healy made it clear to CBC viewers that he’s already seen the players contracts and they are all heading into the GM’s office to re-negotiate right now, in the middle of the season. Even though many minor pro baseball players actually ask to sign in Winnipeg (see the story in the Spring Edition of ONE Magazine), hockey players are too dumb to understand that Winnipeg is a pretty good place to play and raise a family. He forgot that NHLers Dale Hawerchuk, Scott Arniel, Keith Tkachuk and Shane Hnidy all arrived in Winnipeg and married Winnipeg girls. It’s a nice town.
Healy is certainly entitled to his own opinion, but he’s not entitled to his own facts. As the franchise-saving deal in Phoenix continues to crater, are players now telling their GMs they’ll never go to Phoenix because maybe, sometime in the next 30 years, the Coyotes will move back to Winnipeg? In fact, there are strugglung franchises in Sunrise, Fla., on Long Island, in Denver, Dallas and Nashville. Are players saying they won’t go there, either? If these alleged players are worried about Winnipeg, they might want to tell their GMs they just won’t accept a trade anywhere.
It was a stupid comment by a stupid man, but what bothered me most was that not one person on the Hockey Night in Canada panel challenged the idiocy of the statement. Everyone let the stupidity pass and, in the process, looked stupid themselves. On a Canadian TV network paid for by Canadian taxpayers, nobody stood up for a city of 750,000 people that was named the best city to invest in in all of Canada in 2010.
The Federal Government needs to wean the CBC off its annual taxpayer gift of $1 billion. What happened last Saturday was bad for the country and taxpayers should no longer be forced to pay for such drivel.