2026 Olympics- Calgary votes no- 56%

[oldschoolcalgary]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

This isn't a Calgary thing - almost all Olympic plebiscites these days fail. Are Munich, Davos, Krakow, Oslo, Budapest, Innsbruck, Bern, and Boston all on their way to becoming Detroit?

Voters in mature democracies are increasingly distrustful and alienated from the elites who organize and participate in these events. For citizens anxious about the future of core government services like pensions and health care, spending billions for two weeks of watching affluent young adults doing snowboard tricks - or facilities for affluent young adults to practice getting better at doing snowboard tricks - seems like a frivolous way to spend limited government resources. Especially when the event is run by an organization with a toxic brand like the IOC (it's telling that even in the IOC's home of Davos, 60 per cent voted against hosting the games).

These sorts of prestige mega events no longer have broad public support. Here or elsewhere. In the future, hosts will almost exclusively be authoritarian states that don't have to worry about public budgets and popular support.

i see the word "elites" being thrown around a lot in this debate, and i think it would be interesting to see how the vote broke down in terms of socioeconomic lines, because i know plenty of 'elites' that voted against the olympic bid

it is my feeling that the last olympics here was truly a grassroots effort and not some event that only appealed to the rich.... and i believe that was also the case with vancouver; the sheer amount of volunteers required to host such an event requires a broad cross section of the population.

finally, the Bidco played the populist trump card, which was all about jobs and potential spinoff benefits to the economy, and 'getting our share of money from the corrupt provincial and federal governments'... nothing more populist and non-elite than that kind of messaging quite frankly.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Dentoman

Philosophically, I just don't feel that projects of this scope should be put to a plebiscite ... as Slava said, "People are cheap". There is a certain portion of the population that would vote against anything that would cost money.
The province knew this and insisted on a plebiscite tied to funding and then provided very tepid verbal support. The province knew exactly what it was doing. And as I stated before, having a different provincial government wouldn't have made any difference. The plebiscite card would have been played.

Blame people being "cheap" if you want.

Just remembered that city council (those we elect to represent us and make decisions) voted to kill this bid 2 weeks ago. The result would have been the same whether this plebiscite was held or not....citizens just wouldn't have been the final say.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Envitro

4) Lack of leadership from Nenshi and Council is what got us here in the first place. I do believe that this was a referendum on them and not so much the Olympics being hosted in Calgary. A divided council is what got us here in the first place, and nobody wanted to take the political risk of backing this bid, so they took the easy way out of a plebiscite so as to not risk re-election

The IOC was 100% on the ballot here, if they had a sparkling reputation people would be far more interested in hosting them. You reap what you sow though.

[cDnStealth]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

Good thing you admitted it. Visiting Baltimore for anything is highly fishy, unless you were going there to pick up 10kgs of coke.

Well that's a ####ty thing to say. I am currently working near Baltimore and while it isn't the greatest city in the world there are certainly nice things to see and do. And unlike our cities in Canada the ones along the eastern US coast are so close that stopping in a city for a day or two to check some things out isn't a big deal.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by cDnStealth

Well that's a ####ty thing to say. I am currently working near Baltimore and while it isn't the greatest city in the world there are certainly nice things to see and do. And unlike our cities in Canada the ones along the eastern US coast are so close that stopping in a city for a day or two to check some things out isn't a big deal.

How much coke did you pick up and will your insurance cover the bullet holes?

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Weitz

And you went to London of all places because of the Olympics? Speaking of BS..

How is that BS? You just said you go to cities to watch sports and tried to pass it off like you were visiting because of their entertainment districts.

I’ve been to London 3 times. One of those three was specifically for the Olympics. I would have only been twice if they hadn’t happened.

Have you ever visited Kansas City or Seattle because you really wanted to go to the entertainment district? Seriously, try to convince anyone of that and pretend that entertainment districts are as appealing as a major event. Go ahead.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I'm amazed it was only 56%. I voted yes, but literally everyone else I saw there was over 50, and the majority were full on octogenarians. Almost no one I know voted, and I probably wouldn't have either if I hadn't been reminded by my barber that the thing was going on.

[zamler]

Barber? You must be over 50.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

What do you call the person who cuts your hair? Stylist? Hairdresser? I get a shave / beard trim at the same time, so neither of those applies anyway.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by zamler

Barber? You must be over 50.

Barber is the correct word.

[PepsiFree]

If you’re not getting your haircut at a barber, you’re doing it wrong.

[Barnes]

I cut my hair in the basement like a man.

[nik-]

I wax.

[Dentoman]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Blame people being "cheap" if you want.

Just remembered that city council (those we elect to represent us and make decisions) voted to kill this bid 2 weeks ago. The result would have been the same whether this plebiscite was held or not....citizens just wouldn't have been the final say.

Excellent point. Philosophically I agree, it should have ended there, but there was no super majority. I do think that the sudden finding of cost savings did not sit well with a lot of people.
I still believe the requirement of the plebiscite doomed the bid.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Originally Posted by Dentoman

Excellent point. Philosophically I agree, it should have ended there, but there was no super majority. I do think that the sudden finding of cost savings did not sit well with a lot of people.
I still believe the requirement of the plebiscite doomed the bid.

It wasn't just that they magically found cost savings when pressed against a deadline, it's that they found cost savings on the line item that is most likely to be well over budget. It was simply not believable. You wanna say they cut out funding something else, fine. But cutting $150 million from security? Laughable.

[Boreal]

Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary

i see the word "elites" being thrown around a lot in this debate, and i think it would be interesting to see how the vote broke down in terms of socioeconomic lines, because i know plenty of 'elites' that voted against the olympic bid

it is my feeling that the last olympics here was truly a grassroots effort and not some event that only appealed to the rich.... and i believe that was also the case with vancouver; the sheer amount of volunteers required to host such an event requires a broad cross section of the population.

finally, the Bidco played the populist trump card, which was all about jobs and potential spinoff benefits to the economy, and 'getting our share of money from the corrupt provincial and federal governments'... nothing more populist and non-elite than that kind of messaging quite frankly.

Bidco didn't play the populist trump card. The NO side did.

It's always an easier position to be against anything.

It's easy to tear things apart and oversimplify complex topics because organizing it is difficult and comprehending complexity is time-consuming and requires effort, even challenging your own biases.

I was open to the NO side's arguments but anything they provided were only straw man arguments that picked apart any risks associated with the bid primarily utilizing emotionally potent oversimplification.

This is populism 101.

If this is a rejection of the IOC and it's broken funding model... ok... then.

However, there is another broken model that this City is struggling with...

The extortion of municipalities by professional sports, threatening to leave if they don't get sweetheart building deals.

We all know it's wrong, but lots of cities do it because they fear the team leaving.

[cDnStealth]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

How much coke did you pick up and will your insurance cover the bullet holes?

I didn't pick up any and my point is, if you're coming in from Philly or NY (driving or by train) you're passing through Baltimore anyway so it isn't like you're going out of your way travel wise to visit the city. If you're taking the train then a 12 minute Uber ride isn't really what I would consider going out of my way. Grab some crab cakes, walk around the harbor area, visit some neat bars in Fed Hill or Fells Point and hit up a game at Camden Yards or M&T Stadium.

I am not saying the city doesn't have it's share of problems but there are plenty of neat things to see and do that don't involve drugs or anything you might have seen watching The Wire.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by cDnStealth

I didn't pick up any and my point is, if you're coming in from Philly or NY (driving or by train) you're passing through Baltimore anyway so it isn't like you're going out of your way travel wise to visit the city. If you're taking the train then a 12 minute Uber ride isn't really what I would consider going out of my way. Grab some crab cakes, walk around the harbor area, visit some neat bars in Fed Hill or Fells Point and hit up a game at Camden Yards or M&T Stadium.

I am not saying the city doesn't have it's share of problems but there are plenty of neat things to see and do that don't involve drugs or anything you might have seen watching The Wire.

haha. I really really want to watch the Wire but haven't yet because it's not in HD. 1st world problems.

[CPK80]

I think the biggest problem has been the City council has been split pretty even Yes/No from the beginning.. There have been more votes in council on this project than any other City project... There have been information leaks, and political grandstanding from both sides, which led to many distractions and having to firefight a lot.

Also starting with CBEC was a waste of time in my opinion... They should of just started with a BidCO that could of developed a plan, negotiate funding, and then present that plan, and then if in agreement move with actually submitting a bid. I actually think BidCO did some good things in a very short amount of time they did have.

Some of the big problems are the terms engagement and transparency... Some people believe is that the whole process should be done 100% in the open and every single decision has to be discussed in that way with everyone. Where in reality it should be about having the right people do the work present it at the right time, get feedback, make changes, and cycle. But with the critical decisions being documented and open for review. A good example of this is the use of Edmonton Facilities.. there was no harm in looking at this as a option, but eventually a decision was made not go in that direction, but as this was leaked many people still believed it was true.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Calgary is a city of yes, the Olympic backers told themselves and residents. Can-do energy, entrepreneurial spirit. Doesn’t matter if the Olympics are a quadrennial swamp of corruption and budget overruns; we can do it better because we’re Calgary, or so went the mantra of ex-Olympians, business leaders and the mayor. The city had enthusiastically said yes before, and just in case anyone forgot the glory days, local hoteliers paid for the nightly relighting of the 1988 Olympic cauldron and the giant flame atop Calgary Tower during the countdown to the Olympic plebiscite.

How could the ragtag No camp compete with that? By holding nightly bonfires at the stairs behind City Hall, setting ablaze economic development studies and ’88 SunIce volunteer jackets?

Doing nothing, it turns out, was an ample response. Calgarians voted Tuesday against hosting the 2026 Winter Games, reducing the last few days of public flames to a damning symbol: spending money to burn fuel for the sake of nostalgia and the optimistic hope it sparks a better tomorrow.

Does this make Calgary a No city? There were certainly healthy amounts of defeatism within the anti-Olympics vote—a dread of tax dollars going toward anything beyond stuffing potholes and plowing snow, a disdain for business elites and sunny Mayor Naheed Nenshi assuring the masses what great a deal this would be for the city. A conservative get-off-my-lawn mood is prevailing in Calgary, one born of lingering unemployment woes and disillusion with the NDP governing Alberta and the Liberals leading Canada. Sometimes, the hosting debate felt like the Yes side versus the BAHHHHH side.

But with the cynicism was a healthy dose of circumspection. Two weeks before the plebiscite, Calgarians almost universally celebrated a $245-million new central library, funded primarily through property taxes—the perfect rebuttal to the Games boosters now grumbling “this is why we can’t have nice things.” Beautiful, functional and lasting nice things, Calgary residents can say yes to. But there’s reason to not see equivalent merit in expensing $2.9 billion of public funds for a month-long event in the middle of next decade that would have left Calgary with some new affordable housing couple new sports venues and refurbished 1988 facilities, not all of which the region needed to re-Olympify.

In keeping with the Olympic movement’s new recycling ethos, and tightening government pursestrings at all levels, the city left other civic ambitions like a new pro hockey arena or a train to the airport off its bid plan. They’re the sorts of projects that gave Vancouver more than a party to remember its Winter Games by. Bid advocates in Calgary may now wonder when they’ll find money for eventual life-cycle renovations spruce up the speed-skating oval and bobsled track—though governments have injected some funding injections in recent years. Instead those wish-list items will land where they should always be, in the normal tussle with other priorities like public aquatic centres, new suburban schools and repairs to the downtown arts centre, which, through two years of the Olympic debate, has been encased in scaffolding to guard against falling stonework

Moran told one forum last week that 90,000 people moved to Calgary in the couple of years straddling the 1988 Games, and she suggested Canadian Airlines and Imperial Oil headquarters landed in Calgary amid the afterglow of the Olympic global spotlight. But her fervid spin wilts under scrutiny. From 1987 to 1990 the city’s population grew by half the amount Moran cited (people move in, people move out, perhaps); Canadian Airlines was formed in 1987 when an airline already based in Calgary swallowed up smaller rivals; Imperial Oil arrived 17 years after the Saddledome’s Battle of the Brians, and ages after it made any sense for a major oil firm’s head office to remain in Toronto. When corporations scout new office locations, they look past such hokum and base their picks on credible and compelling reasons. A city’s residents, when being courted with such gauzy ideals and promises, can simply shrug them off—or vote to spite them.

Yet after this failed and divisive exercise, Calgary still needs Moran and her ilk to do their rose-tinted best. Unemployment in the city sits above eight per cent. One-quarter of downtown office space sits vacant—far more than anywhere else in Canada. That’s a problem likely too big for a pipeline, a bounce-back in oil prices or a conservative premier to remedy. Civic leaders have concluded the city needs to pivot to other sectors for long-term vitality, and many positioned another Olympics as an easy (here’s that word again) catalyst. “In this city, we are allergic to small dreams,” the mayor said after the voters’ rejection. Nenshi and others conceded that Calgary 2026 wouldn’t be a silver bullet. Good. Now let’s see what else is in their arsenal for this battle of paramount urgency.

https://www.macleans.ca/olympics/how...olympic-dream/