Madam Chairman, what bothers me is that it is my impression that the government is trying to slip this through the back door, since it could not get it through the front door.
I remind the House that when the Deputy Prime Minister floated the balloon of helping professional sports teams, there was an outcry from Canadians that led the government to back down within 24 to 48 hours and say “no, we will not support hockey clubs”, which was the case at hand at the time.
If we look at the numbers here, we see that the Ottawa Senators, the Montreal Canadiens, the Montreal Expos, every year, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000, $800,000 and $900,000 was paid and each time, fees of 12% were paid to communications agencies. All this adds up to $20 million. The numbers show that the government did what it said it would not do: support professional sports clubs.
I see that the minster understood my point and the question proves this. However I think that people have been fooled, when we see that the government did what it said it would not do, particularly when the Deputy Prime Minister said no way. In the end, they flipped on the matter.
How does the government explain that today the figures contain $20 million for professional sports clubs?