About $8.2 million isn’t a lot of money to waste in the Liberal scheme of things, but it all adds up. That’s the cost of the skating rink that Justin Trudeau had built on Parliament Hill this winter as his gift to the City of Ottawa to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Confederation.
The rink was only operational for two months this winter and was used by 150,000 people at a daily cost of $100,000. Rules included no hockey, no speed skating and no figure skating. If that’s how the Liberals operate a skating rink we should dread the costs of the Trans Mountain Pipeline which they bought and are now going to build.
There was a peewee hockey tournament scheduled for it, but it was cancelled due to cold weather showing that climate change really can affect things on Parliament Hill.
When I was a kid, we used to play slough hockey using frozen horse apples for pucks. Real pucks were too expensive and always got lost in the snow. We couldn’t afford all of the protective gear that kids wear these days and those horse apples really stung when they hit you.
It would have been fun to for some taxpayers to challenge a scratch team of Liberal politicians to a game of old-fashioned Saskatchewan slough hockey on that rink using horse apples and no rules. Diversity and inclusiveness would prevail; no prior experience, ability, common sense or gender preferences necessary to make the team.
The losers would have to pay for the rink, except the taxpayer’s team would be exempt because they always lose to the Liberals anyway and shouldn’t have to pay twice for the same boondoggle. The good news is that the pucks would be free because there’s always plenty of horse puckey flying around Parliament Hill. But the Liberal team would have wished for some global warming to soften those pucks up a bit before the game.
The sorriest thing about this silly exercise is that the Rideau Canal, which is the world’s longest skating rink, is only a block away from Parliament Hill. It’s operated by the National Capital Commission, which is largely funded by the federal government.
John Thompson
Kaleden