Will MLAs be taking a free ride to the Games?
Prince Rupert– British Columbians have the right to know if they will be footing the bill for BC Liberal MLAs to watch coveted Olympic events from a luxury suite during the Games, the New Democrats said today.
“The B.C. Liberals are spending nearly a million taxpayer dollars to buy prime Olympic tickets so that they and their friends can watch events for free. It’s simply not acceptable. To make matters worse, when the B.C. Liberals were caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they tried to hide it from British Columbians,” said New Democrat critic for the Olympics Kathy Corrigan.
This week Carole James and the New Democrats revealed that the B.C. Liberals spent nearly a million taxpayer dollars on three thousand Olympic tickets, including at least two luxury boxes at coveted hockey and skating events. Many of the tickets have been set aside for B.C. Liberal MLAs and cabinet ministers for the purposes of ‘Olympic community engagement and leveraging’, according to documents obtained by the Opposition.
“The government is spending close to a million dollars of taxpayers’ money on Olympic tickets while cutting funding for mental health services in the northwest, children’s’ school sports, DPACs and the Special Olympics,” said Gary Coons , MLA for the North Coast.
“The B.C. Liberals should get their priorities straight and realize that all British Columbians have a right to attend the games. MLAs should not be abusing their position to attend Olympic Games. They should purchase tickets like everyone else.”
When the issue was first raised on Wednesday, Olympics Minister Mary McNeil said the government had not yet set any rules over how the free tickets will be distributed. The next day, the Liberals revealed they were stashing a pool of up to 2,000 tickets, which could be sold to B.C. Liberal insiders while the other British Columbians without tickets have to pay scalpers’ prices if they want to attend events. “At the end of the day the B.C. Liberal MLAs hid the fact that they bought these tickets from the public. As elected representatives they have a responsibility to the public to tell whether or not they will be accepting free Olympic tickets.”
Corrigan noted that the $1 million for B.C. Liberals to entertain guests at the Olympics comes on top of around $1.4 million for tickets already shelled out by Crown corporations B.C. Hydro, B.C. Lottery Corporation and ICBC.
“In these difficult times, when the public is tightening their belts, for government to say, ‘we’ll just lay out one million and worry about it afterwards’ is incredibly irresponsible,” said Corrigan.
Carole James and the New Democrats have been calling on the government to designate a formal role to the Auditor General to monitor and report on Olympic costs and bring back accountability and transparency around government spending.
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