Quebec faces scrutiny over $480K subsidy for Four Nations hockey tournament amid budget concerns

After facing backlash for subsidizing NHL preseason games, the Quebec government has allocated $480,000 for the Four Nations Tournament in February, raising further questions about its spending on professional sports.

The Four Nations face-off will replace the NHL All-Star Game this season, featuring the best players from Canada, the US, Finland and Sweden.

Some of the games will be played at the Bell Centre, while others, including the final, will take place at Boston's TD Garden.

And while Quebec provided funding, the state of Massachusetts and the city of Boston confirmed to CTV News they didn't.

"See other cities saying, 'hey, we can do this, and we don't need the money,' then you really have to justify what is it that you needed to do then to elevate yourself above others that didn't need that money injected in," Concordia University economics professor Moshe Lander said in an interview.

While subsidies for other events are in the millions, the amount for the Four Nations tournament is much lower, representing only 0.0003 per cent of Quebec's $157 billion in total spending for this year's budget.

"We're talking about an economy that runs into the billions and billions of dollars. This is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things, but it's the optics that look bad," Lander noted.

La Presse confirmed the money will be given to the NHL through Tourisme Montreal. The league made $1.6 billion in profits last year according to Forbes.

This week the Tourism Minister, Caroline Proulx, defended spending on sports, saying, "you need to spend money to make money."

"If you bring in $4.1 billion of US dollars or European dollars, I think it's worth betting on these events," she said.

Some events have a proven track record. A 2016 study by Ad Hoc Research on the Canadian Grand Prix found it drives around $90 million in spending from visitors. It calculated expenditures from government and industry at $61 million.

Lander said that while the spending on the Four Nations tournament is minimal, following the government's record-setting deficit, the optics of allocating more funds for professional sports might come at a much greater cost.