Toronto won`t bid for 2024 Olympics
Baku, January 21 (AZERTAC). Toronto will not bid for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games after a city committee voted to stop the process in its tracks.
On Monday, the city`s economic development committee considered two separate consultant reports looking at the pros and cons of Toronto bidding on and hosting the 2024 Olympics and 2025 World Expo.
No one showed at city hall Monday to try to persuade the committee to support the city`s Olympic bid. The next step would involve spending an estimated $1 million for a more detailed pre-bid analysis. The absence of previous “Olympic champions” was noteworthy, said Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam.
“Toronto`s chance of winning the 2024 Olympics is next to none,” she told the committee. She was not on the committee, but attended to argue in support of the Expo bid.
Toronto finished third behind Atlanta and Athens for the 1996 summer games and second to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games. Three Canadian cities have hosted the Olympic games in the past 47 years. Montreal hosted the summer games in 1976 and Calgary and Vancouver hosted winter games in 1988 and 2010.
While the committee unanimously scuttled the Olympic bid, it was divided on whether to continue to chase the 2025 world`s fair. Unlike the underwhelming show of support for the Olympics, a parade of Expo boosters argued an exposition would be a great catalyst for transit, infrastructure, civic engagement and innovation.
In 2012, city council backed the Expo feasibility study. But that was before the federal government withdrew Canada`s $25,000-per-year membership in the governing body called the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). A bid must be submitted and supported by the national government of the candidate city.
The Stephen Harper government has said unequivocally that it would not host nor participate in future Expos because of cost and questions of relevancy in the Internet world. Canada will not have a pavilion or be participating in the 2015 World Expo in Milan.
Councillor Gary Crawford said spending an estimated $1 million for further study was really an attempt to get the federal government to “jump on board” when that seems unlikely.
Councillor Michael Thompson, who is chair of the committee, said he was not prepared “to mortgage the future of Torontonians” with respect to an Expo bid.
Two Toronto New Democrat MPs, Craig Scott (Toronto-Danforth) and Matthew Kellway (Beaches East York) told the committee they supported the Expo bid. A federal government led by Thomas Mulcair and the NDP would rejoin the BIE, though an election won’t be held until next year.
Montreal hosted Expo `67 and Vancouver Expo `86 and Toronto is in a good position to win the 2025 World Expo, Wong-Tam said.
Last summer, Mayor Rob Ford wrote to Harper asking Canada to continue its membership in the BIE. But Monday he said he supported neither the Olympics nor Expo bids.
“The Olympic bid and World Expo should be shelved indefinitely right now,” Ford said. Deputy Mayor Norm Kelly agreed. “Now is not the time.”
The decision on whether to direct city staff to proceed with a formal bid for the 2025 Expo now falls to city council.
Other news in this section
