(ATR) Calgary voters head to the polls on Tuesday to cast their ballots on whether the city’s bid to host the 2026 Olympics and Paralympics should proceed.
Supporters on both sides of the plebiscite held rallies in the final weekend in hopes of swaying those who remain undecided.
The result is non-binding but should the majority decide against a bid, it would be extremely difficult to keep the process alive.
The Calgary City Council voted 8-7 in favor of a motion seeking to end the bid late last month, two votes short of the two-thirds majority needed. The decision came after an 11th-hour funding agreement was reached on how to pay for the public portion of the bid cost.
The federal government agreed to put in $1.423 billion in cash and the province of Alberta $700 million. Calgary is supposed to provide $370 million in cash, along with an additional $20 million to pay for $200 million in insurance to cover potential cost overruns.
Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi supports the bid but has admitted that a "yes" vote in the plebiscite does not ensure that the bid will survive. The city council still has to figure out how to pay its share and Nenshi told local medialast week that "council still reserves the right, if there's not a good deal there or it doesn't work for the City of Calgary, to pull out of the process".
None of the three levels of government is willing to be responsible for any additional cost overruns above the $1.1 billion in contingency funds that has been included in the current budget. The issue is just one of the details still to be worked out.
Calgary election officials revealed that 54,442 people cast votes during the two days of early voting for the plebiscite last week. Included in that total were 7,822 mail-in ballots.
The turnout compared favorably to the advance voting figures for the last municipal elections in 2017, when 74,965 people turned out but over a seven-day period.
The effort to convince voters to back a bid has been hampered by a process timeline that has lagged well behind the schedule set forth by the IOC for potential 2026 bid candidates.
The Calgary 2026 bid chair Scott Hutcheson was appointed only five months ago. The chief executive officer Mary Moran was brought on board a month later.
Calgary 2026 is also battling history in its efforts to win a public vote on the Olympics. The last successful Olympic referendum came in 2013 when Oslo voters backed a 2022 Winter Games bid. However, the country dropped the bid midway through the process.
Vancouver 2010 passed a public referendum during its bid process, before winning the right to host the Olympics at the 2003 IOC Session.
The other two bidders for 2026, Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo and Stockholm, do not face a public vote but neither has secured full government backing.
The IOC last week gave its approval for the joint Milan-Cortina bid to move forward without financial support from the Italian federal government,saying the current financial support from the regional governments involved in the bid was enough.
A new center-right government in the city of Stockholm has said it opposes the Olympic project, although Stockholm 2026 says it intends to convince them of the merits of the bid.
Note: Monetary figures in Canadian dollars
Written by Gerard Farek
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