Vancouver 2010 CEO says Olympic costs lower than what is being reported
CALGARY — Now that a new price tag has been put on a possible Calgary bid for the 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Games, a comparison to the most recent games in Canada is inevitable.
The bid corporation Calgary 2026 has put forth a $5.2-billion draft hosting plan that asks for $3 billion in money from the city, provincial and federal governments.
The chief executive officer of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and Whistler says the $7.7 billion that’s been attached to those games is inflated and the actual cost was closer to $4 billion.
The cost of the Canada Line from the Vancouver airport to downtown and the construction of the convention centre expansion shouldn’t be lumped in with games costs because they were never Vanoc’s projects, John Furlong said.
The B.C. government decided independently of the organizing committee to build them in time for 2010, but the Canada Line and the convention centre were not in Vanoc’s bid, he said.
“When you put these two projects together, you get to over $3 billion,” Furlong said.
“It’s really easy to add that into the Olympic bid, but it frankly isn’t fair. It was never part of the discussion. It’s a question of what was necessary for us and what wasn’t.”
Furlong doesn’t want Vanoc saddled with the $7.7 billion number when the rail line and the convention centre were not considered necessary to hosting the games.
He said Vanoc had a games transit plan that didn’t include the rail line. And the press centre was going to be in a $20-million temporary building, but Vanoc ended up entering into a business agreement with the province to use the convention centre.
“It needs to be explained,” Furlong said. “It’s important to differentiate these because the organizing committee in all of this, kind of takes a bit of a beating and it’s not fair.”
An Olympic Games Impact Study for the 2010 Games published by UBC in 2013 put games operating and capital costs at $4.08 billion and said “Olympic-induced infrastructure projects” were an additional $3.679 billion.
Vanoc budgeted about $2.5 billion for operations and capital construction costs.
Since improving the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler was included in the bid presentation to the IOC, Furlong says it is reasonable to include that $600 million and the $900 million spent on security as “Olympic” costs.
“If you were going to include the road and you were going to include security, I wouldn’t be prepared to argue,” he said.
The Calgary Bid Exploration Committee estimated in June 2017 that $4.6 billion would be needed to host the 2026 Games.
The Calgary 2026 plan released this week included $1.1 billion in contingency funds “to mitigate risk.”
The 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, was said to cost $50 billion.
Furlong believes money required for games operations would have been comparable to Vancouver, but because everything else — sport venues, roads, bridges, rail lines and a tunnel — were built from scratch, the total became a number that frightened potential future host cities.
“Calgary is a highly advanced city infrastructure-wise. So is Vancouver,” he pointed out.