Province of Québec legislators need taxpayers’ money and a lot of it to fix the roof again.
Major League Baseball owners will never award Montréal an expansion franchise if the city and the Province of Québec don’t come up with a plan to build a new baseball stadium. Given the arms race going on between municipalities in the United States to provide public funding for a private business’s venue it may be hard for any Canadian city to compete for a Major League franchise given the disparity in the currency between the United States and Canada. The Canadian dollar is worth around 75 cents US and is slightly up from previous 2023 lows. But politicians in Montréal and Québec are dealing with an old problem, a problem that helped end the run of the Expos in Montréal. The 48-year-old Olympic Stadium still has an issue with its roof, a retractable roof that seemingly has never worked.
Québec legislators are studying the finances of the stadium and are trying to figure out how much it will cost to repair the roof again. A report in La Presse claimed Québec taxpayers would have to pick up a tab of at least $750 million Canadian to replace the Olympic Stadium roof. Québec Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx could not confirm or deny the story other than to say that the roof issue is being studied and she would have more at a later date. Proulx said the stadium roof was torn in about 20,000 places. In October, Québec Premier François Legault said the stadium needed a new roof and added the venue needed a new lease on life, even though the repairs might be costly. “My challenge with the Olympic Stadium is to turn it from a negative symbol into a positive one”. The Olympic Stadium has had problems since the day it opened in 1976 and is a negative symbol.
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