Winning and Losing

I'll admit that my heart swells with pride when Canadians excel at the Olympics and I've been known to get a little misty when a gold-medal performance is followed by the national anthem. The same heart soars (that may be an exaggeration) when an awaited package from Amazon arrives at our door. After all, it usually contains books.

How are these observations related? In the past 24 hours we've heard that the Winter Olympics won't be coming to Calgary and Amazon won't open a new centre in Toronto. The Olympic bid seemed rather shaky from the outset and there may have been some creative cost guesstimates to convince Calgarians to get on board. Calgarians voted no. A Toronto group made an impressive pitch to bring Amazon and 25 thousands jobs to the city. Amazon was probably never all that interested in coming north of the border.

I'm pleased that both bids failed (sure, call me a phony). Why? Enough already with fawning over institutions and corporations which thrive on exacting billions from taxpayers in exchange for the supposed economic benefits they will bring to a city or province or country, as well as the cachet of being "world class." We've been told that both New York City and Arlington, Virginia will cough up billions in incentives to lure a corporate giant to their communities. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is the wealthiest man in the world with more than 100 billion in assets but is courted to be a "corporate welfare bum," to use the phrase of the late David Lewis. We are well aware of the widespread corruption of Olympic committee members and the refusal to oust Russia from competition despite decades of cheating. The ideals of the institution seem to be long gone.

Granted, Toronto wasn't offering much in the way of carrots to Amazon, other than an excellent work force and the stability of universal healthcare. Some observers suggest that Amazon would have sucked away talent from a thriving tech sector. I wonder what pressures the company would have brought to bear on different levels of government if the interest had been stronger. As for Calgary, they got to be "world class" once before, so there is consolation.

In s a society which supposedly wants to be fair and equitable both cities could focus a little more on social housing and fixing schools and roads. There is a reason faith groups regularly oppose these "bright shiny object" initiatives. They are attempting to bring attention to far less appealing initiatives which might actually benefit the broadest spectrum of citizens, including those who don't have many advocates. Wouldn't that be a win?

Thoughts?