blevkog

For that matter, how far would $750 Million go towards a cleanup of Halifax Harbour - as far as I know, haven't the Municipal and Provincial Governments been promising to get around to that 'any day now' for a decade or so? How's that going?

That is finally coming along, actually, Dan. The pumping stations are all under construction and the main trunk lines I believe are in place. I'm not sure when they do the official "handle jiggle" or whatever you do to ceremonially open such a thing, but it should be in a year or two I think.

What I don't know is whether they are going to a secondary or tertiary filtration. I tried to find out a couple of weeks ago on the web and didn't find anything. I might make some phone calls to dig up some info on this.

Okay, then, well good. I do agree with you that the $750M could be better spent somewhere else.Mind you, if they go about it rationally, it could be useful - for instance, my understanding is that Melbourne built the Athelete Housing for their Games with the intent of turning it into low-cost housing afterwards. Sadly, I suspect that Rationality and the Provincial Government stopped exchanging emails a long time ago. I would ask this group a couple of questions:

a. Is there a firm commitment for this $750 million? For instance, is the federal government really committed to spending a bare minimum of $250 million a bare four years after the 2010 Winter Olympics?

b. This $2 Billion in revenue that this is supposed to pump into the economy - do they have actual data to support this or are they just pulling this number out of their ass? Okay, yeah, I can see where the Windmill Road hookers might pick up some extra business for a couple of weeks, but will a two weeks sporting event really pour enough money to justify spending that kind of dough to build the venues, not to mention what it would cost to maintain them in the future?

I'm curious. Just how much of that two billion in revenue will come from the 75 million in production costs? Or are they saying it's two billion as yet uncreated dollars. There's probably nothing to it but I've always been suspicious of grand plans with huge budgets that need to make a good impression to survive. The people behind them always seem to have something other than warm fuzzy feelings for atheletes below their surfaces.