Marcel Aubut wants Toronto to bid for Summer Olympics, but is that a good idea?

The Pan Am Games in Toronto and the surrounding area aren't even set to begin for another month, but Canadian Olympic Committee president Marcel Aubut has already declared them "a fantastic success" and said they should serve as a springboard towards a Toronto bid for the Summer Olympics. There's some logic behind that, especially after International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach's reform package was approved in December; that package should lower the costs of bidding and loosen the restrictions on using existing facilities and having every event within the same city, all elements that would make a Toronto bid more feasible than it had been in the past. However, that doesn't mean that bidding for the Summer Games is a good idea for Toronto. There are still a lot of issues with bids for the Summer Olympics, and there's a strong case that Aubut's enthusiasm for trying to host the event in Toronto is misplaced.

First, let's explore exactly what Aubut said. This wasn't a "we might explore the idea," or a "we'll see how the Pan Am Games go" (keep in mind that ticket sales for those Games are still low, with approximately 400,000 of the 1.4 million available sold so far), but rather a definitive declaration that he wants Toronto to bid for the Summer Olympics, with the only remaining question being which year they choose to bid for. Here's the key part of what he told Paul Hunter of The Toronto Star: 

Aubut also told Hunter that Toronto's mayoral change from budget-slashing mayor Rob Ford (who was involved in the city's economic development committee deciding not to spend $1 million on a pre-bid study in January 2014) to John Tory should boost the city's chances:

Not everyone else is so convinced, though. Even under the reform measures, hosting the Olympics can be staggeringly expensive. A feasibility study Hunter cites from the 2014 decision not to go ahead with a pre-bid analysis estimated the bidding process alone would cost $50 to $60 million, and the Games would be expected to cost $3.3 to $7 billion. That was before the reform package, but it's worth noting that the Pan Am Games' budget is $2.5 billion. Even if some of the infrastructure can be reused, hosting the Summer Olympics seems likely to cost far more than that. Boston, one of the four cities that has already declared its candidacy for 2024, estimates costs of $4.5 billion for the Games themselves in a "frugal" bid, plus costs of $6 billion in infrastructure improvements. It seems unlikely that it would cost much less to host the Games in Toronto.

What about past Olympics? Well, the 2010 Vancouver Olympics spent $1.84 billion in operations, $603 million on venue construction and $1 billion on security, and all of those costs would likely be much greater for the larger-scale Summer Olympics. Consider that the 2010 Games had 2,566 athletes competing in 86 events; by contrast, the most recent Summer Games, held in London in 2012, had 10,768 athletes competing in 302 events. Those 2012 Summer Olympics were widely cited as sustainable and praised for their commitment to use existing and temporary facilities wherever possible, but they wound up costing 9.3 billion pounds ($17.63 billion Canadian). It may be possible to have an Olympics cheaper than that in Toronto, especially with the new reform package, but the London example shows the scale of the Summer Games and how much they can cost. 

It's not really surprising given these costs that many cities are becoming more reluctant about even bidding for the Olympics. Strong local opposition in San Francisco was part of why that city was passed over in favour of Boston by the U.S. Olympic Committee, and there was significant opposition as well in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, the other candidate cities. The Boston bid itself has an incredible number of critics despite its promises to use mostly-private money; a March poll found just 36 per cent of respondents in favour and 52 per cent opposed. We don't know exactly how things would go in Toronto, but there's been a lot of protest even about hosting the Pan Am Games given their costs. That could be even greater with something the scale of the Summer Olympics.

Overall, a Toronto bid for the Summer Olympics seems rather extraneous and unnecessary. Yes, hosting the Olympics can have benefits for cities, but it comes with a huge price tag. Hosting the Summer Olympics in particular is difficult given the incredible numbers of athletes and sports involved, which increases the price even more. If Canada's determined to bid for another Olympics, it might make much more sense to pursue another Winter Olympics in either Calgary or Vancouver, where the infrastructure is already mostly in place; the Winter Games are a smaller-scale event, but one with many of the same benefits as the Summer Games and far less of the costs. Aubut's optimism about a Toronto bid for the Summer Games is impressive, but it seems likely that many Toronto residents won't share it.