Arena For The Asking

Why Carney Should Help Break The Sens’ Arena Logjam

Mark Carney’s tagline is that now is a Time To Build, a truth he continuously states now. He’s made big announcements yesterday about defence spending and the need to use our newfound speedy 2% commitment as a way to boost the Canadian economy, in addition to making us more US resilient. So, given his dual capacities as PM and MP for Nepean, I have a modest proposal for a project that Carney should help get over the finish line, that would be both good for the country, for our economy, and be very good politics for the new PM - the new Ottawa Senators arena at Lebreton Flats.

I’m dead serious.

The saga of the Sens arena is long and tortuous, but the nuts and bolts of it is that this should have been done two fucking years ago. (It actually should have been done 6 fucking years ago, but how much of the death of the Melnyk-era plan was sunk by bureaucratic delays and how much by Melnyk being a disastrous mess is unclear.) It took 27 months of negotiations to get the new Sens ownership group from entering negotiations to a tentative deal to allow them to buy 10 acres of land, but that tentative deal still hasn’t come up with an answer on the most important question, which is the land value and how much Andlauer et al have to pay. It will be 3 years since the post-Melnyk agreement between the Sens ownership and the NCC to partner on the land came to be. Now, if you’d like to start the clock at when Andlauer bought the team, it’s 2 years since he signed the deal and 21 months since he officially became owner. And we’re still negotiating price.

There are legitimate questions to work through - there’s some remediation that needs to be done, namely, plus basic infrastructure to make sure people can get from the LRT station right there to the arena - but in a sane world all of this would have wrapped up already and we’d have shovels in the ground this summer. We don’t, because we are an unserious city that farms out these decisions to the National Capital Commission, also known as the place where dreams and ambition and forward progress go to die. It’s unacceptable that we have a crown corp that runs an essentially unaccountable parallel governmental process on key decisions. Lebreton Flats and this fucking neverending stadium mess is a monument to bureaucratic insanity and uselessness.

It cannot be this fucking hard to get a deal done. It just can’t be. Where there is a common desire for something - and everybody wants the rink downtown, because if it were downtown it’d be easier for the majority of the fanbase to go, it would help team revenues and end the concept of an internal cap, revitalize a part of the city that is useless right now, and allow for a Maple Leaf Square-style communal viewing experience for big games, and hopefully many many playoff games to come - it gets done. But we’ve let this process go on and on and on.

If Carney wants to a project that shows he is a different kind of politician, a politician who builds things and not excuses, a politician who can cut through malaise, and a politician who is in touch with his city, taking a leading role in getting this deal done is a brilliant idea. We all know the broad contours of what the deal looks like, and we all want the outcome, so let’s fucking get it done, and then use that as a model for getting other big projects done.

Part of the problem that governments have is they’re dealing in issues that are Byzantine and abstract, but this is the rare issue where the airquotes “lazy” take is the correct one - Ottawa can’t get a stadium done because bureaucratic incompetence and delays. Therefore, it’s the perfect project to come out swinging in favour of, because it allows for Carney to make a breakthrough to audiences who don’t watch Cochrane or Vassy. Imagine the political upside if every hockey fan in this country heard Friedman on 32 Thoughts or Chris Johnston on TSN’s Insider Trading explaining that the deal was stuck until Carney read everyone involved the riot act. That would be worth its weight in fucking gold.

It would also be a project that Carney will be able to point to the successes of quite easily. One of the problems Justin Trudeau had was his accomplishments didn’t always have visible signs of progress. They got taken for granted in a lot of ways, and this stadium would be a perfect example of an accomplishment that can’t be ignored. Every time something major happens with it, hold a press conference at the site with everyone involved, take a victory lap when it opens, and then make a big show of going to the opening game, especially if we can bribe the next commissioner to give Carney Oilers-Sens to open the new arena.

But this isn’t merely the whining of a Sens fan, in fact it’s the opposite - moving the arena downtown will make going to games a significantly more involved process, given where I live and where the current stadium is. The reason this matters is because this shitshow represents an opportunity to turn the page and lay down the law. To change the nature of approvals processes in this country from efforts that find ways to say no to ones that look for ways to get to yes. Carney is looking for projects that are shovel ready, have a clear purpose, and are privately funded. How about a privately funded plan that will revitalize our capital, and that will send a signal that we are truly different?

One of the things Doug Ford understands is the value of symbols. Doug Ford and the tiny shovel didn’t actually help anybody in the big snow storm in 2022 but it made people think that Doug cares about Regular People so it worked. We need symbols in this country, and we have one that’s on the goal line we just need to punch in. We need to elevate obvious, ready made successes to show this country and the world that we can find a way to yes. At a time when Carney is trying to ensure we are taken fully seriously, failing to get this done would be a hell of a bad signal. “Carney talks a big game about fundamentally remaking Canada’s economy but we can’t even get shovels in the ground on a hockey rink” might be unfair, but it is the kind of thing that a smart opposition takes advantage of.

Whether the Conservatives are that opposition? Who the fuck knows, but this is a winner for Carney. Take advantage.

(As we ramp up coverage of the Carney era, national unity threats in Alberta and Quebec, and attempt to use whatever influence I have to influence this new government, consider a paid subscription. All work will remain free but a paid subscription is a way to support my work and enable me to continue to do what I love.)