Message to Calgary city council on Olympics bid: Just say no

Calgary’s city council was set Monday to discuss whether or not to express interest in bidding to host the 2026 Winter Olympics, and although the meeting is in camera and thus behind closed doors, a synopsis of the conversation can be safely assumed to run along these lines:

“Are you #*%^* kidding?”

At least you hope so -- never underestimate the largesse of elected officials debating spending other people’s money, and all that.

Fuelling this push that’s been some time in the making -- and even getting an okay in news reports from the mayor and councillors -- are memories, now nearly three decades old, of the smashing success that was the 1988 Olympics. That was the one that brought names like Katerina Witt and Eddie the Eagle to the fore, and also a $140 million profit to the city of Calgary. Facilities including the Saddledome, Canmore Nordic Centre, the Olympic speed-skating oval and parts of Olympic Park have been an equally big part of the legacy of those Games, turning the area into a training ground for future Olympians. While aging, these venues would require mere upgrading -- so goes the argument for going ahead with a bid.

What’s going to make it such a hard sell is the reality of 2016: these aren’t the more free-with-a-dollar 1980s, when Calgary basically obliterated the competition nationally and globally by outspending them. It’s hard to imagine the same thing happening today.

This time around, Alberta’s oil-based economy is in the dumps, and the wildfires that beset Fort McMurray earlier this year have added more bleakness to the picture. CalgaryNext, the downtown redevelopment project that included a replacement for the Saddledome was turned down in April by council because its $1.8 billion cost amounted to more than double the original estimate put forth by its advocates - precisely the kind of meter-is-running economics that routinely makes original Olympic-bid cost estimates merely a starting point.

Add an IOC governing body that has been implicated in scandal (again) surrounding the awarding of the 2020 Summer Games to Tokyo, and there’s no way you wouldn’t want to invite them over for a cup of coffee, let alone bringing their overpriced, virtually tax-free show into your community for 16 days of circusing. It’s a show, too, that the IOC has problems tarting up for the shop window - the 2022 Winter Games is going to Beijing, which just hosted the 2008 Summer Games and never mind that it gets hardly any snow. What it has, though, is the IOC’s perfect sponsor: an authoritarian government that doesn’t have to concern itself with voters and is desperate and willing to pay big money for the sort of global exposure and prestige that an Olympics provides, at least for a couple of weeks. For wanna-be players on the global stage, the Olympics remain a powerful lure. For the rest, they’re a luxury item best ignored.

Toronto faced this same decision last year, after surviving the Pan Am Games and considering going (again) for the Summer Olympics before declining at the potential and assured enormous cost. Quebec dropped out of this same Winter Games bidding process earlier, figuring they couldn’t win. In both those cases, sanity prevailed.

For Calgary’s sake, let’s hope for the same outcome here.