Mulcair stresses poor over pro sport

Tax dollars shouldn’t be spent on big league sports franchises when hundreds of thousands of Canadian kids live in poverty, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said Friday in Montreal.

The return of major league sports teams is a hot topic in Quebec, with both Quebec City and Montreal looking to regain lost franchises, but Mulcair said sports fans shouldn’t expect any help from the federal government.

“I think that nothing would be better than for the private sector to get together and put everything in place to have a Major League Baseball team (in Montreal),” he said. “But in a society that knows still to this day far too much poverty and when I have hundreds of thousands of children going to school hungry, it’s hard to understand that the taxpayer would be asked to fork over money for franchises that are worth billions.”

Provincial politicians are more flexible with the public purse, however, as roughly $200 million in tax dollars were recently spent building Quebec City’s new NHL-size arena, scheduled to open in September.

Media giant Quebecor officially submitted a bid in July to bring back an NHL team to the provincial capital and while its application didn’t include plans for public funds, at least one Quebec minister has publicly mused about investing tax dollars in a new franchise.

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre is one of the city’s biggest cheerleaders for the return of the Expos, but the discussion is pure speculation, as most agree a baseball comeback is at least several years away.

The NDP leader also reiterated his party’s pledge to increase the Guaranteed Income Supplement benefits to Old Age Security and to lower the age of eligibility for government pensions back to 65 from 67.

He said the two measures would lift 200,000 seniors out of poverty.