My Business in Vancouver column:
Where does “riot control” fit in when you’re budgeting for the arts?
Culture, says Tourism Vancouver, should be the priority for the next decade if Vancouver is to become a truly “world-class” city. Culture is what gives us a global brand that will keep people coming here, and staying around longer, spending more money when they do.
And because a city has to express its character in an entertaining way – since that’s really what culture is about as an economic activity – how much should civic government spend to cultivate a thriving cultural scene?
Civic-owned institutions like the art gallery, check. Grants for the major arts organizations and dozens of small companies, check. Public art, check. Policing and engineering services …um, not really.
For those services, the city bills out on a cost-recovery basis. Even non-profit events like the jazz festival have to cover the costs incurred, from policing to engineering, plus administration.
Yes, they get grants, but they’re still expected to put up a big chunk of change. If they can’t, they may not survive.
So two questions: is sport culture? And should it pay its way?
No doubt sport is a cultural expression – notably when the brand of the winning hockey team is inseparable from the identity of the city for months at a time. “We are all Canucks” is meant to be taken literally.
But should Big Sport pay for the costs incurred by its success? Specifically, are professional sports in the same category as, say, the Pride Parade?
Apparently not. While the Canucks and Lions may be profit-making entities, when it comes to the costs of handling the consequences of their success, Vancouver taxpayers pay.
Yes, the Canucks are billed for street closures around their stadium, but when it comes to closing Georgia Street for live sites and handling the traffic everywhere else in the city, city hall eats it. Hell, the Canucks didn’t expect to pay for the victory parade in the event they won the Stanley Cup.
Though the money spent on jerseys alone was likely greater than the ticket receipts of every arts company in town, the Canucks were not expected to divert a nickel to the city’s coffers. Nor does the city get any sales tax from the economic benefits that shower down on every bar and restaurant and cheerleading media outlet.
Property taxes don’t go up in the event the Stanley Cup comes to town; the team gets the silver and the civic taxpayers get the bill.
No one minded the public expenses, of course – least of all the mayor and councillors of every party, who donned the jerseys and didn’t question the expenditures, except to ask the province to chip in. (Answer: no way.)
When the team is winning and the sports jocks are amplifying the tribal spirit, no one in leadership wants to be called out for reinforcing the image of “No Fun Vancouver” – just possibly the most intimidating meme ever used to suppress common sense.
Who would have dared, in the heat of the playoffs, to have put out a public announcement: Don’t come downtown. No more street parties. Turn off the TV screens.
Until, of course, three hours after Game 7.
So what now for the future management of the playoffs? Will the public shaming by Facebook prevent another e-riot?
Or do we give the police chief a blank cheque, because we can’t afford the risk of burning cars and smashing glass?
Let’s assume Tourism Vancouver is right: culture means world-class status – and accept that sports means culture. Then where should the money come from to foster and promote a world-class cultural scene if Big Sport doesn’t pay, but everyone else does?
Do we divert resources that might go to fund the non-profit arts sector, which pays around minimum wage, to cover the ancillary costs for an organization in which every principal is a millionaire?
Doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?
But the city can’t really send the Canucks a bill for policing off-site events, can’t stop the media cheerleading, couldn’t prevent people from coming downtown to drink and celebrate and won’t likely get anyone else – region or province – to contribute. Nonetheless, the leadership – whoever is in power – would certainly have to pay the political price for another riot.
If Doug Keefe and John Furlong want to be really helpful in their investigation, they will tell us not just who was responsible for the last riot but who should pay to prevent the next one. •
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Comment from Sonny Wong:
I agree with you about the conundrum re: sports/arts and who’s paying for what. Seems that there’s this irrational sense that the Canucks are ‘ours’, and not Aquilini’s. It’s a strange perspective that can only be explained by asymmetric means, in the same way that in economics people are disproportionately more motivated to prevent a loss than they are to see a gain. Maybe this should be lens in which we see the world in the future.
Very, very well said, Gordon!
Good questions, but the “no fun city” moniker isn’t directed at sports parades and the city not paying for them, it’s about the city and provincial rules that make running live venues extremely difficult and unrewarding, it’s about the strict requirements that go way beyond common sense and way beyond what happens in other cities, it’s about the leftover puritanical regulations around alcohol sales and consumptions and the level of bureaucracy groups have to go through to serve it. Things like that.
Events like Pride or the fireworks depend on the use and control of public space as a necessity; they simply couldn’t happen without the use of the public space.
The Canucks, Lions, or Whitecaps don’t rely on the use of public space to carry out their activities. All the performances happen inside of a controlled environment where their commercial interests are secured. The public display of the games is a separate event from the actual game performance.
The teams do not give away the spectacle of the games, their product is supported through ticket sales and the sales of the broadcast rights to the game.
In the case of the Canucks playoffs, the hundreds of thousands of people who were entertained peacefully before the final games payed nothing for the public display of the games. They were only able to see the public showing of the games because the broadcast rights holder made a public showing of the games.
No matter how much I would prefer to see arts funding over riot clean up, if the Canucks were not the party responsible for initiating and putting on the public showing of the games, then holding them accountable for the costs seems completely unreasonable.
The CBC and city of Vancouver were responsible for the public display of the game broadcasts and they should pay for the costs of this decision.