Members of the International Olympic Committee met with the Calgary business community and government representatives on Tuesday to talk about a bid for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
The Calgary Chamber hosted a Q and A session in the morning with Olympic Games Executive Director, Christophe Dubi, and Calgary’s 2026 Bid Committee to talk about the process and factors that could impact a bid.
“This is a project that makes sense. We have all venues, about 20 percent, but those venues you need are needed and they are needed in the long run. You need social housing and you will invest in social housing. It makes sense because it’s a need for this community,” said Dubi. “And you have the best organizers. You have in COC, a partner of the highest caliber, and the results that you have with your athletes is not for no good reason, it’s because of hard work and dedication and the same goes to event organizing.”
The city has agreed to dip into budget savings and spend another $5.1 million to explore a bid and part of the funding will go to a public engagement program, which is slated to start in September.
The Chamber has not been involved in the bid process so far but President and CEO Sandip Lalli says they wanted to get clarity on next steps.
“For us it’s about this October 31st timeline of being invited from the dialogue stage into the next stage in the IOC process and so what happens then? Because our plebiscite isn’t technically scheduled until later in the fall so what are the consequences and then what does the IOC do, in that sense, for ‘okay well, thank you Calgary, you know, the process has gone further, it’s great’, we don’t know those kinds of things yet,” said Lalli.
A bid would cost $30 million and would be shared between the municipal, provincial and federal governments and would include the $2 million cost to conduct a plebiscite to gauge public opinion.
“The process is, the IOC session will select its candidate cities and hopefully, Calgary, the plebiscite comes afterwards. If the vote is positive, we continue. If not, it has happened in the past, Hamburg was a typical case and it’s a problem obviously because we want a positive result and as I said we have great material to work from, but no harm done, if the citizens do not wish to bid for the games and to continue the candidature and we’ll continue with the other cities,” said Dubi.
“At the end of the day, any deal that we get will be a deal that we want. If we don’t want that deal we won’t proceed forward with it but the IOC will work with us on all issues. The whole process is one of interaction between them and us,” said Scott Hutcheson, Chair, Calgary 2026 Board of Directors. “The public won’t agree to a done deal if they have a plebiscite. So the public will be able to vote on all the information that’s transparent and available to them and have a say on whether this suits their needs and what Calgary looks like in 2026.
The city has until January 2019 to submit its bid book but there is some concern that time might run out before Calgary actually makes a bid.
“Absolutely, but you’re already into the second phase of conversations with the IOC, even before January so there is that tightness of time in the fall here and that needs to be addressed. I think Calgarians and the community need to know, what does that mean, because there are multiple timelines being put out there and there’s off-ramps but we don’t know what those exactly mean to us,” said Lalli.
“Currently we have three orders of government auditing a government submission book and we’ll get to that information in time. Our view is it’s really important to get the right numbers before us and not worry so much about the timelines,” said Hutcheson.
Erin Waite, the communications lead for No Calgary Olympics, was in attendance and says the biggest concern for Calgarians is cost overruns and how they will be covered.
“We won’t know costs until September, which is very late in the process with the plebiscite in November, so I’m very concerned about the time it will take to truly understand those costs and where those number come from and how those are going to be covered. And the second thing is that we’re on the hook for cost overruns so that’s a real concern. And right now, just the bid process alone is 16 percent over budget just after a few months so that’s a real poor indicator for what hosting the Olympics could look like for us,” she said.
“We expect that in case there is a deficit, and there will not be a deficit, it’s not been the case for many, many years now, but in case there is a deficit, there is a mechanism to cover, to make sure that we can deliver the games,” said Dubi.
“That’s something we are already doing in the candidature process for 2026, we’re working with the cities when it comes to their budgetary plans and we’re finding working with them to ensure that we’re finding efficiencies, already at this stage, not necessarily or not waiting at all until we get into games organization mode but already at the candidature level,” said Hannah Burns, Head of Promotion, Olympic Games and Olympic Candidatures, IOC.
There are several other cities competing for the bid and the winning city will be announced in September 2019.
For more information on the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Bid Book Overview, click HERE.
