Recently, Blacklock’s Reporter revealed that Governor General Mary Simon has budgeted millions of taxpayer dollars to install an open-air skating pavilion at Rideau Hall.

This swank facility will include an artificial ice surface, and of course, a decorative roof will be installed to “protect it from climate change.”

We’re not sure if the “it” in that aforementioned sentence refers to the Governor General or the ice rink…

The estimate for the off-the-lot price for this proposed rink will be anywhere between $4 million to $8 million. In any event, a few questions arise.

First, why does the Governor General need an ice rink that might cost as much as $8 million, especially when Ottawa is supposed to be cutting federal spending these days?

Secondly, when it comes to the politics of ice rinks in Canada, we must ask: who gets to install a rink? And who is forbidden from doing so?

Which is why Rebel News recently returned to the Markham, Ont. home of Martin Ross.

Ross used to have a fantastic backyard hockey rink on his property. The kids loved it. But the rink is now long gone.

Apparently, the Gagnon family next-door raised a fuss with the local councillor, Reid McAlpine.

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The Gagnons have allegedly donated to McAlpine in the past, so the councillor made sure to do their bidding by ensuring that the rink gets torn down. (Rebel News has reached out on multiple occasions to the Gagnons and McAlpine for comment; they declined to do so.)

The city went on to play hardball with Ross, telling him to either teardown the rink or the city would do it for him — and send Ross an invoice for $500,000!

After a failed effort in court to save the rink, Ross had no choice but to demolish the edifice.

But it’s downright galling: if one pays for a rink with their own hard-earned money in order to give kids enjoyment the city goes to war motivated by a political vendetta. Meanwhile in Ottawa, our tax dollars are being squandered into vanity rink projects.

And it’s not just the Governor General. Do you recall when the Treasury Board spent $8.2 million to install a TEMPORARY hockey rink on Parliament Hill in 2017?

And comparing apples to apples here, what about Mayor Patrick Brown’s opulent backyard hockey rink in Brampton? Why does Brown get a backyard hockey rink and Martin Ross does not?

Is the answer simply that Sneaky Patrick Brown is a mayor and Mr. Ross is merely an ordinary citizen?

Looks that way to us. And the double standard is appalling.