Freedom Party of Ontario Archive

AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:
Following Freedom Party’s successful effort to oppose taxpayer funding for London’s bid to host the 1991 Pan Am Games, the London Bid Committee met with the Mayor of London to canvas ways in which to save the bid. Among the options proposed by the Bid Committee was to have the federal government commit to contribute $37M after the end of the federal government’s five-year games-funding moratorium.

Wayne McLean, host of AM980’s show Hotline, asked his listeners if they want the Bid Committee to continue its efforts to host the 1991 Pan Am Games. McLean invited Freedom Party Action Director Marc Emery for his view on the question. Thereafter, McLean had Bid Committee Chair Gord Hume in-studio to discuss the status of the Bid Committee’s effort and to field calls from listeners. One of those callers was Freedom Party president Robert Metz, who also was Chair of the No Tax for Pan Am Committee. After pointing out to Hume the large number of polls in London indicating that the taxpayer does not want to fund the games, Hume played the smear card, saying that Metz is president of a “radical right wing” political party, as though that were an answer to the public’s condemnation of the Bid Committee’s aims. Metz’s point was reinforced at the end of the show, when listeners were polled: 20 of the 29 people who called in said that the Bid Committee did not have their support. Ultimately, the Bid Committee failed to get the government money that it wanted.

AUDIO – DESCRIPTION:
On June 5, 1985, the Canadian federal government announced that there would be no more federal funding of organized sports events until at least 1990. Freedom Party Action Director Marc Emery and Robert Metz’s No Tax for Pan Am Committee (a committee formed by Freedom Party) had steadily opposed taxpayer funding for London’s bid to host the 1991 Pan Am Games. Flyers and newsletters had been distributed throughout London, and numerous radio and TV appearances of Emery, Metz, and other No Tax for Pan Am activists had tipped popular opinion against taxpayer funding for the games. The federal decision effectively killed the London Bid Committee’s bid to have London host the 1991 Pan Am Games (the London bid committee was comprised largely of local business owners and building contractors who hoped to make a lot of money as a result of taxpayer funding for such things as the building of sports arenas).

On the evening of June 5, 1985, AM980’s Sports Call program interviewed three pro-bid individuals (London East Member of Parliment Jim Jepson; Darwin Semotiuk of the London Bid Committee; and London City Controller Joe Fontana who later would be a London MP, and a London Mayor*), followed by Marc Emery. During their respective interviews, Fontana predicted that the federal government’s decision would be very unpopular, but Emery predicted it would be popular. Thereafter, the program asked listeners to call in and indicate whether they were for or against the federal government’s decision not to fund the games. Emery was right: 74% of callers supported the federal government’s decision not to fund the games with taxpayer money.

*NOTE: In 2014, Joe Fontana resigned as City Mayor after he was found guilty of three fraud-related offences for forging an expense document in 2005 that resulted in a $1,700 government fraud