Some CAQ members questioning spending up to $7M for two Kings games in Quebec City

The decision to spend millions in public money to welcome the Los Angeles Kings to Quebec City is starting to cause discontent even within the governing Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).

CAQ MNA for Jonquière, Yannick Gagnon, got the ball rolling on Thursday, telling Radio-Canada that the announcement had not come at the right time and that he was receiving several calls from disgruntled constituents.

"I'm going to ask for someone to explain it to me because my voicemail, my email inbox at the moment, people are asking me to explain it to them," he said on the program "C'est jamais pareil."

Shortly afterwards, Education Minister and Levis MNA Bernard Drainville admitted in a news scrum that the timing of the announcement was bad.

"I hear the criticism, I understand it, and I agree with you that the timing is not ideal," said Drainville. "I'm not going to back down now. I'm part of a government that made this decision, and the reason we made it is that we wanted to send a signal to the National Hockey League."

In his view, the Quebec government has a duty to remind the NHL that Quebec City has a new $400 million arena that is ready to welcome a professional hockey team.

He acknowledged that the granting of a subsidy of $5 to $7 million to host the Kings -- an "investment," in his view -- "did not meet with unanimous approval."

However, "once in a while, the National Hockey League has to know that we are here, that we exist, that we have an arena to host a team, so that's why we did it," he said.

Drainville went on to say that "we continue to believe in the return of the Nordiques to Quebec City."

"I respect criticism, but imagine if Montreal had lost the Canadiens. That's what happened to us in Quebec City. We lost our team. And frankly, we'd like to have it back one day," he said. "So yes, decisions like these are necessary, and not everyone is in favour of them, but they send out a very clear signal that for us, the return is important."

On Tuesday, Finance Minister Eric Girard announced that the Kings would play two preseason games next autumn at the Centre Vidéotron.

He awarded a subsidy of between $5 million and $7 million but did not provide an analysis of the economic spin-offs.

Girard made this announcement a week after declaring, during the economic update, that Quebec's financial framework was "tight" and that the next six months would be difficult.

The three opposition parties in the national assembly, as well as Éric Duhaime's Conservative Party, all said the spending was ill-advised and that the government had lost all sense of priorities.

On Wednesday, deputy premier Geneviève Guilbault told Radio-Canada that she understood the criticism: "Should we have done it, or not done it? I'm not going to take the place of my finance colleague."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Nov. 16, 2023.