Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Who knew that getting equal treatment was racist?

Apparently CBC thought so, but Cold Lake's city council had another thing to say about it.

Now with all due respect to city council, I have no doubt that some of the reaction was tinged with prejudice.

Here's the thing though - offering land to ANYONE for 90% of fair value is a bad idea - it doesn't matter WHO they are. Regardless of what you think the reasons are, what it comes down to is that Council DID make the right decision, regardless of if the Islamic community or the CBC thinks otherwise. This doesn't preclude the Islamic community from building a mosque (they can), it doesn't even preclude them from buying the same land and building the mosque there anyways - all it does is preclude them from getting a deal that every other non-profit organization or religious organization would jump at.

What it comes down to, is that religious organizations already get a tax exemption for their churches or gathering places, council made the right decision in not allowing a sweetheart deal to go through. The optics may be bad now, but it will go away when the Mosque gets built anyways.

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