Olympic vote seems stacked on the Yes side

The campaign leading up to the Nov. 13 Olympic bid plebiscite is obviously an opportunity for both sides to make their case to Calgary voters, but so far it doesn’t feel like a fair fight.

For all the talk at city hall of neutrality and transparency around a possible Olympic bid, the deck appears stacked on one side. The bid corporation, Calgary 2026, and its $30-million in funding courtesy of taxpayers seems firmly entrenched on the Yes side, and information that might be awkward for the Yes side is missing in action or otherwise being kept from public view. Calgarians deserve better.

We now know the specifics of the federal contribution won’t likely be known until after Nov. 13, says Liberal MP Kent Hehr. The provincial commitment will likely be known before the vote, but we don’t know when exactly.

We already knew the city’s four-year budget, with its expected tax hikes and service cuts, will be made public the day after the plebiscite. Yet it seems like exactly the sort of thing voters should see beforehand.

And last week, as the city was announcing its ostensibly objective public-engagement process, more information came to light about the financial red flags being presented to councillors behind closed doors.

After information leaked out last month about potential cost overruns associated with relocating the Victoria Park bus barns for an Olympic athletes’ village, a redacted version of that due-diligence report was publicly released.

Unfortunately, too many at city hall were more concerned with hunting down the whistleblower instead of having an honest conversation about the possibility that the Olympic cost to the city might end up being higher than what Calgary 2026 has been touting.

Undaunted, though, our whistleblower — or perhaps a different one — took steps to ensure the information was put before the public and thus the CBC obtained the full, unredacted version of that report. It makes for some harrowing reading. There are numerous financial risks identified in projections for revenue, expenses, capital budgets, financial guarantees, contingencies and inflation adjustments.

This was information presented to city councillors nearly a month ago, but none of them is allowed to discuss it publicly. Do we really believe that the same rules would apply if council was hearing information about Olympic costs being lower than expected?

Jeromy Farkas, Olympic skeptic and Ward 11 councillor, is becoming frustrated, telling me in an interview last week that council is “being muzzled” and that he’s having a hard time keeping track of “what’s secret and what isn’t anymore.” Farkas says he’s “very troubled that he can’t come clean with Calgarians about what we know” and warns that “if Calgarians knew what council knew at this juncture, they’d be running away.”

The Yes side, meanwhile, seems as rich in platitudes as it is in actual dollars. Calgary 2026 CEO Mary Moran spoke recently before a business audience not just to sell their hosting plan but to plead for Yes votes. Moran went so far as to invoke the Brexit vote in the U.K., suggesting that older voters might vote No, leaving horrified young voters to lament, “Look what my parents have done to me.”

It was all rather overwrought and heavily political, and not really relevant at all to any of the specific work Calgary 2026 has done. It’s also unfair to suggest that legitimate concerns about a lack of information are tantamount to a betrayal of younger generations. If we really want to play that game, the “look-what-my-parents-have-done-to-me” line could just as easily apply to a bid that leaves us with considerable debt and an unfulfilled infrastructure wish list.

The city’s role should be, as much as possible, to simply put as much information out as possible and let the public decide. Instead, we’ve got an unlevel playing field and incomplete financial information — both of which are skewed in the Yes side’s favour.

The Yes side seems as rich in platitudes as it is in dollars.