The Politics of Hockey and the G7

Here are two Kananaskis fun facts. I did media training for the municipality there a couple of years ago and learned that Kananaskis only has 150-permanent residents and the only place in the park there's cell coverage is in or near Kananaskis Village.

It was too bad he couldn't have been in Edmonton to watch the Oilers play game 5 of the Stanley Cup final, but it's probably for the best he wasn't, and that has nothing to do with the final score.

PM Passes on Game 5

A week or so ago, a friend mentioned that he thought it was nice that Premier Danielle Smith had invited Prime Minister Carney to watch game 5 of the Stanley Cup final with her at Rogers Place in Edmonton, I agreed. It was good to see her put aside politics and invite the PM to cheer on his favourite team with her as the Oilers try to win the first Stanley Cup by a Canadian team in over 30-years.

Somehow though, I couldn’t envision Carney and Smith sitting together in the crowd cheering for the Oilers. I also couldn’t see them in a private box, having a beverage and enjoying the game.

The private box thing is tricky around here. Premier Smith is still smarting from the bad PR she got from the last Oilers playoff run when she watched a game in Vancouver in the box of Sam Mraiche of MS Care. Mraiche and his company are the central figures in the $1.7-million lawsuit the former CEO of Alberta Health Services has filed against the government after she was canned.

That led to stories about Smith being entertained by Mraiche and every cabinet minister being asked if he or she attended hockey games for free as guests of MS Care, or anyone else for that matter.

If Carney and Smith had been in a box Saturday night, the questions about whose box it was would have come from the media as quickly as an Evan Bouchard slapshot. Smith's Press Secretary said the game couldn’t be fit into the PM’s schedule. That certainly may have been the case. I’m sure Carney would have liked to be there to cheer on the Oilers, but he had important things to do in Ottawa, like having a beer with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Besides, his people didn’t want to answer touchy political questions about who owned the box. There was bound to be some conflict of interest involving the governments of Alberta and Canada.

Then There's the Taylor Swift Issue

This isn’t just an Alberta issue. It happened late last year when Taylor Swift put on a half a dozen sold out concerts in Toronto and Vancouver.

Harjit Sajjan, the minister for the Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada, came under fire in the days before the record-breaking tour's final stop in Vancouver after accepting taxpayer-funded tickets. According to Sajjan’s office, he received clearance from the federal ethics commissioner before accepting the tickets. He said he contributed to the food bank, as requested by the company he got the tickets from. He went as far to mention that Taylor Swift supported food banks too.

Bonus points there for whoever thought of that line of defence.

When the heat got too hot because of media stories, Sajjan handed back the tickets just before the concert (likely disappointing his daughter enormously). He didn’t run for re-election in Vancouver in the May election.

Just a few weeks before that, Prime Minister Trudeau went to a Swift concert in Toronto. By all accounts, the former PM had a great time, singing, dancing and handing out friendship bracelets.

Problem was, there was a riot going on in Montreal at the same time by anti-Israeli protestors after things got out of hand. Trudeau was criticized for going to the concert, but I’m not sure what he should have done. Do people think he should have flown to Montreal, donned some riot gear and tried to keep things under control?

Rightly or wrongly, politicians getting free tickets to major sporting events and sold out concerts is a tricky thing. Would they have got the tickets if they didn’t hold public office? Will the tickets and relationships they have with the people who provided them affect the decisions they and their colleagues make?

To me it’s not a big deal, but the reality is anytime a politician is seen getting something the average person can’t get or can’t afford, people are going to be ticked. That’s just the way it is.

The Last Kananaskis Summit

Back to the G7 Summit.

The last time it was held in Kananaskis, was in late June 2002. It was actually the G8 then, but since then they kicked Russia out for obvious reasons. But in 2002, Russia was part of the team and Valdimir Putin was in Kananaskis. I hope he enjoyed the Rockies.

On June 27, 2002, I arrived at the airport in Calgary for a flight home to Edmonton in the early afternoon, only to discover my flight had been delayed. It didn’t take me long to figure out why. World leaders were in the process of being flown back to the airport for their trips home.

I’m not sure where everyone’s plane was parked, but I remember getting a great view of the US President George Bush’s Air Force One on the tarmac. Actually, there were two Air Force One’s parked about 50-meters from each other. They were identical and part of the security plan to ensure Bush got back to the US safely. 911 had taken place only nine months before.

Since I had nothing better to do while waiting for my flight, I watched what turned out to be an incredible show on the tarmac in front of me. US military helicopters were coming in and landing, staying for awhile and then taking off again. This happened several times over a period of about a half an hour. It was amazing to watch. A colleague who understood security better than me explained a fleet of choppers was being used so nobody would really know which one President Bush was in, just in case terrorists were at work.

I didn’t see Bush get out of a helicopter and board one of the planes, but perhaps that was part of the stealth-like security. I was amazed that it looked like a major military operation, but they were just flying one person for several minutes from Kananaskis to Calgary.

I golfed at the Mt. Kidd course at Kananaskis a few weeks ago, before driving to a media training assignment in Calgary that took place the next day. No helicopter or fancy security for me, even though I felt pretty good about firing a 93 that afternoon as I made the drive to Calgary.