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Olympic bid adieu

The Olympic Games: an economic opportunity for cash-strapped Toronto or a waste of taxpayers’ money?

A few of the city’s political movers and shakers, among them some Tory high-flyers, thought bringing the 2020 Summer Games to the Big Smoke might make sense, maybe even create the impetus needed to bring the city’s gridlocked transportation system into the 21st century.

The twin mayors, Rob and Doug Ford, though, put a fork in that big idea with the elected mayor, that would be Rob, declining to lend his signature to an exploratory bid for the Games.

The mayor’s office hasn’t publicly declared why it’s opposed to a possible Games bid. All we have in terms of reasons for that decision comes from Big Brother Doug, who told the Star that the city is in no financial position to consider the Olympics.

But those pushing the bid weren’t asking for money, says Bob Richardson, a member of the exploratory committee. All the were looking for the mayor’s blessing to investigate the possibility of a Toronto bid.

As per International Olympic Committee protocol, Richardson says they needed the mayor’s OK for Toronto to be officially considered by the IOC. The deadline for cities to submit their intentions to bid for the 2020 Summer Games is September 1.

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But to that money question… Richardson argues that a time of economic recession is precisely when governments should be investing to build infrastructure to create jobs.

Here are Richardson’s responses to a few of our questions about the Olympics dreaming.

Why an Olympics bid now?

We looked at the field for 2020 and we thought a North American bid would be very competitive. Two or three of the heavy contenders we expected to bid for the Games aren’t going to, so it created an opportunity, probably the best we’ve had. It’s unlikely the U.S. is going to bid. Rio is hosting the Games in 2016 so we’d almost become the bid of the hemisphere.

What kind of backers did you have on the corporate side?

A number of the COC (Canadian Olympic Committee) sponsors were interested. We weren’t worried on that front. We had pretty good feedback and people like Rogers and CTV were obviously very interested.

There would be no financial obligation on the city?

We weren’t looking for any money from the city through the bid phase. Traditionally bids are paid for by the private sector, the federal and the provincial governments. The city would frankly be a small player from a financial perspective. If you take a look at the Pan Am Games funding, the city’s contribution is miniscule compared to the other levels of government.

What’s your best read on why the mayor’s office didn’t want to even explore this?

I think his view is, and it’s not necessarily my view, that the city is in a deficit position and we shouldn’t be entertaining big projects while we’re going through a cuts exercise. That’s their view and they’re entitled to have it. They’re the guys running the show right now.

But our feeling is that if you’re going to get a lot of stuff done in the city, hosting the Olympics is a great way of doing it. Vancouver got transit out of the deal. Some social housing. Hotels were rebuilt and a lot of tourism infrastructure. You take a look today at Toronto and ask yourself if any of those kinds of things are going to happen without a major project, and I suspect the answer is ‘no.’

You don’t think he rejected the plan because it was the idea of a bunch of Liberals?

I think for a number of people the bid came out of nowhere. In fairness, we only decided to do this recently and we knew the odds would be long. If we could have put it together, that would have been great. That we couldn’t, didn’t really surprise me. We were asking for a lot in a very short period of time.

Do you think the mayor’s decision not to explore a bid reflects negatively on him in the eyes of the city’s business community?

I can’t comment. I just have no read on that at all. Certainly the feedback from the business guys and the labour guys was great, just because it’s a lot of jobs and business for an extended period, particularly during a difficult economic time. During the last big recession is when Atlanta won its bid to host the Olympics, and if you take a look, Atlanta did fairly well economically compared to other cities during that period of time. One of the reasons for that was that there was a lot of work going on.

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