CALGARY SAYS NO TO WINTER OLYMPICS 2026 BID

Council faces vote to cancel campaign to host Games

With a majority of Calgarians voting against the city hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics, Calgary’s bid is all but finished thanks to pledges from elected officials, who said they would not go forward without the support of voters.

Of the 304,774 ballots cast, 171,750 or 56.4 per cent were against Calgary hosting the 2026 Olympics, with 132,832 in favour.

The results of Tuesday’s vote are non-binding and city council must still formally vote to kill the bid, but the provincial and federal governments were clear their financial support of the Games was continent upon the endorsement of Calgarians in a public vote.

Calgary 2026 chair Scott Hutcheson thanked hundreds of downcast supporters who gathered at a bar east of the downtown to hear the results Tuesday night.

“I believed in what the Olympic Games could do for our community and for our province and for our country,” he said.

“I’m disappointed with the outcome, but I certainly respect the democratic process.”

The Olympic bid had an estimated price tag of $5.1 billion, with the province agreeing to contribute $700 million and Ottawa covering another $1.423 billion through Sport Canada.

The city was asked to contribute $390 million, including $20 million for a $200-million insurance policy against cost overruns.

Both Hutcheson and Calgary 2026 CEO Mary Moran acknowledged the debate around the bid had become “divisive” in the leadup to the vote.

“I think building a dream and articulating that with our social media-type of environment today and a populist movement makes it more challenging,” Hutcheson said. “Almost on every issue, things are polarized today in a new way.”

Moran said Tuesday that the last few weeks have been a useful process, even though Calgarians have turned down the bid.

“I think what we’ve got to do is harness that energy that we have with the debate and discussion that’s gone on and really continue on that conversation and figure out what the future is for Calgary,” Moran said Tuesday evening.

“We still live in a great city and we have a great city to sell.”

It’s been more than two years since city council first agreed to explore a bid for the 2026 Games.

Council green-lit $5 million in 2016 for the Calgary Bid Exploration Committee (CBEC), helmed by former police chief Rick Hanson, to begin studying the bid.

CBEC told council that hosting the Games was “feasible,” but even early on there were signs the Olympic debate was headed for choppy waters.

Hanson told Postmedia in early 2017 he was surprised by the level of cynicism around the Olympics.

“The biggest barrier to what we’re doing is the overall lack of trust that people have about Olympics in general,” Hanson said at the time. “People have become really

cynical — about the Olympics especially.”

The city has since spent millions more on Calgary’s Olympic project — including one-third of the total $30-million price tag for the bid corporation — even as council members remained divided on a bid.

Further complicating the process was the long delay in reaching a funding agreement between the city, the province and the federal government to fund the Games.

When a deal was finally reached at the 11th hour last month, council still voted narrowly to cancel the plebiscite. The vote only proceed on a technicality, since a supermajority of council — 10 of 15 votes — was needed to cancel the plebiscite.

As the rhetoric and campaigning ramped up ahead of Tuesday’s vote, some council members had bemoaned the “destructive” and “polarizing” tenor of the debate surrounding the bid, but it’s a debate that may have finally come to an end.

A turnout of 304,774 was reported for the plebiscite, including 46,620 advance votes and 8,001 mail-in ballots.

That voter turnout compares to a total voter turnout of 387,583 for the 2017 civic election.

The city said it would release official results Friday, but campaigners for the Yes side and political watchers told Postmedia that the advanced vote was “overwhelmingly ” against the bid, while Tuesday’s results showed more Calgarians moved to the Yes side by voting day.

Yes Calgary campaign lead Stephen Carter said the negativity and “misinformation” at the time of the advanced vote on Nov. 6 and 7 — just a week after a funding deal was hastily announced on Oct. 30 — ultimately proved “insurmountable.”

Carter said a failure in leadership is to blame for the bid’s death.

“Today, people understood how good a deal it was for Calgary and last week they didn’t,” Carter said. “Last week, the anger and the fear took advantage of this. Unfortunately there was a lot of people who wanted to stoke that anger and fear for their own purposes.”

Council must still make an official determination on Olympics ahead of the IOC deadline for bid submissions in January. Several council members have said they ’ll be guided by the outcome of the plebiscite in their final decision.

Coun. Evan Woolley, who made a high-profile defection from the Yes camp last month, said earlier Tuesday evening that he will abide by the results of the vote.

Woolley said Calgary will be the same city when it wakes up Wednesday, regardless of the outcome.

“Tonight is a decision point. Whatever that decision point is, Calgarians will get behind,” he said.

Reacting to the news Tuesday night, Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it’s time to “set aside the mean stuff” and focus on what comes next.

“I think it’s really important for us over the next weeks and months to come to start peeling that onion and better understand how we got here and what was at the root of people’s concerns and in addition what is at the root of people’s hopes and dreams for the city and how we move forward.”