But Minister, the optics of that don't please me either. You know, here's Tony with his cheque book saying, “How much do you want? How much do you want? How much do you want?” A guy who wins his riding by 46 votes all of a sudden has a goodie bag of $50 million to spread around the riding.
But can I ask one simple question? Did we look at the cheapest possible option? Why didn't we put it on a military base? The Kapyong Barracks in downtown Winnipeg have 400 heated houses that we keep empty and heated so they don't go skunky on us. There are other military bases across the country that could be easily secured and have accommodation and parade halls and mess arenas where you can accommodate huge numbers of people. This was not the cheapest option, even though we're in the worst economic crisis that we've faced in decades.
Why did you throw aside all of the cheaper options to host this thing if we couldn't get out of hosting it altogether?