Calgary gets another chance

The 2026 Winter Games bid survives democracy to remain unloved but undead

It’s a tricky wicket, democracy. We are reminded of this every day, as humans all over the world respond to some of the most complex challenges in history by electing our dumbest, meanest people. It’s the worst system of government, as the old saying goes, except for all the others.

Anyway, about the Olympics. On Wednesday, the city of Calgary’s chosen representatives met to decide whether or not to shoot for the 2026 Games. There are only two other bids, in Sweden and Italy, both rickety as hell. Calgary, as long as it didn’t implode in terms of either representative or direct democracy, would have a shot.

But the bid had tottered in on shaky legs. The council’s Olympic bid committee had recommended killing the process; a last-second funding deal had been struck between the federal government and the province of Alberta, leaving the city responsible for a decision. Not all the particulars — like, say, who would be left holding the Halloween bag for any overarching cost overruns — had been nailed down.

So after a day of questions and debate, Calgary city council needed 10 of 15 votes to kill its Nov. 13 plebiscite, and got … eight. A majority, but not enough of one. So it survives, muddling through, unloved but undead.

In a way, it was a positive example of democracy. Council explored the bid, debated it, and streamed it all on the internet. This wasn’t a backroom bid, or a strongman bid. There were worries about money, about infrastructure, about the future. There were worries about debt thresholds and credit ratings and affordable housing.

The people in charge of the bid came in hot, with 2026 BidCo chair Scott Hutcheson haughtily charging, “By terminating the plebiscite today, you’re taking away our democratic right to bid.” City bureaucrats admitted they didn’t have a complete handle on financial risk, but that the infrastructure involved would likely lower the city’s credit rating.

It was, in other words, the crucible of a city council meeting. BidCo CEO Mary

Moran admitted at one point that delaying the plebiscite so people could be better informed was a competitive disadvantage.

It would have been truer if she had just said the competitive disadvantage was democracy itself.

Which, for the Olympic movement, is becoming a real bugaboo. For every Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 — awarded at the same time, so that the International Olympic Committee had a good candidate for both Games — there are the cities that dropped out either before a referendum or in the shadow of popular disapproval: Oslo, Krakow and Mu- nich for 2022; Budapest and Rome and Boston for 2024; Graubunden and Sion in Switzerland, Graz and Innsbruck in Austria for 2026.

It’s easy for Beijing or Sochi to spend $40 billion (U.S.) or $50 billion on an Olympics. Who’s going to argue? Beijing got the Games for a second time after the mess in 2022, when candidates dropped out and left nothing but China and Kazakhstan, and chose the superpower bailout — 2026 may yet get there, with Salt Lake City as a backup.

But Calgary’s last-minute deal was a little shaky, a little late. It proposed defined contributions of $700 million from the province of Alberta and $1.453 billion from the federal govern- ment, and required $390 million from the city. There remained a $1.1-billion contingency fund built into the system for overruns, but nobody knew who was responsible after that. They wanted to buy a $200-million insurance policy for $20 million to help cover any gap, but didn’t know if they could do it at that price.

It wasn’t quite enough red flags to be a Flames game, but the biggest one was that Calgary’s initial security budget was $610 million; the last-minute negotiations Tuesday night dropped that budget by $125 million with “efficiencies and best practices.” Another $150 million came off by moving the athletes’ village and reducing 1,000 housing spots for staff that would no longer be needed with the security costs.

Which … well, London’s security costs were estimated at $454 million and more than doubled. Vancouver’s security costs quintupled between the bid and the actual Games, to between $900 million and $1 billion. Security is the thing you can’t miss on.

So they bickered and talked about divisiveness, about togetherness, about respect.

And it survived, in thoroughly tepid fashion. On to the plebiscite.

The other day, IOC president Thomas Bach was speaking at something called the Smart Cities and Sport Summit in Lausanne, Switzerland. According to Inside The Games, he talked about how Winter Games are harder anyway: you need mountains, to start, and “where there is climate change in a number of regions, people are saying that it makes no sense anymore to invest in winter sports as there will be no return on investment as in 10 years we will have no or not enough snow, and that means we can only survive with artifi- cial snow.” All of that is true.

He also said, “We are also affected by the changes in politics, where everyone believes an Olympic candidature must be put forward to a referendum. Are such complex issues, which are seven years away, a real topic for a referendum?”

Not everywhere, Thomas, not everywhere. But in Canada, they are. A majority of Calgary council voted to kill the Olympics, but the Olympics wouldn’t stay dead, yet. See? Democracy is a tricky wicket, and Calgary gets one more chance.