Auditor General Tallies Up The Cost Of Inviting The World!

“The Olympics "can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby". Jean Drapeau, Mayor of Montreal, 1976..

Feeling a little sick in the morning these days? Putting on some extra weight? Have some cravings for strange food combinations, feeling some unusual kicks in your tummy. British Columbians, welcome to your nesting years, keep an eye on your nest egg!

As Mayor Drapeau eventually found out, Olympics can have a deficit and it could very well be a lesson we are about to discover in British Columbia.

BC’s chance to shine on the world’s stage is going to cost a lot more than we were initially told back in those giddy days of going for the gold medal in games preparation.

Friday’s Vancouver Province ran the following little attention grabber across its masthead, a headline guaranteed to have every British Columbian grabbing for their wallet for the next little while.

VANCOUVER’S $2.5 BILLION OLYMPICS

Auditor-general tallies up true cost to taxpayers of
staging 2010 Winter Games

PROVINCIAL SHARE 1.5 BILLION
MUNICIPAL SHARE 389 MILLION
FEDERAL SHARE 607 MILLION

And keep in mind those are the figures as calculated for Friday, September 15, 2006, that’s three and a half years before the games actually begin and the final bills will become due.

It’s an age old process this Olympic Games bid and build. We are told that the cost of the infrastructure and administration of the games will be a reasonable amount, and then suddenly the true cost becomes apparent; add on inflation for the construction, unknown security requirements, health needs and any other unexpected expense and you’ll see your budget blown to smithereens in quick order.

And somebody has to pick up the tab! Welcome to BC, please leave your donation at the door for collection.

The BBC traced back the demise of the economical Olympics in a feature for their website. Los Angeles was the last of the big money makers, back in a golden era when television networks just asked where do we sign and corporate sponsors tripped over themselves to share in the glory of the Olympic torch and the California sun.

On the other side of the agenda, is the most recent summer Olympic experience of Greece, when they first bid on those games the pulled out the abacus and said that they could pull it all off for a sensible little 1.3 billion, by the time they got around to ordering blue prints and looking for sites the cost had bloomed to 5.3 billion, by the time the world said their goodbyes the cost of the Olympics had rocketed to 14 billion dollars, a far cry from that reasonable amount of 1.3 billion.

Granted those were the summer games, an extravaganza that has always been steeped in over exuberance and over runs (hello there Jean), the Winter Games are a much kinder, gentler affair but … already the Vancouver dream has increased exponentially from the original prediction of 600 million dollars. A figure that the Provincial government says is still attainable, a strange little bit of stick with the plan bluster, despite all indications to the contrary.

The parallels to Montreal and Athens is a topic that is on the mind of the NDP opposition and will no doubt haunt the Liberals as the games construction phase continues on towards 2010.

Calgary’s 88 Olympics were considered to be a huge success both in the spirit of the competition and the hit on the pocket book. They were in a way Alberta’s coming out party. It’s a scenario that BC would like to revisit in 2010. However, BC residents would not doubt prefer to step out on the world stage without having to reach for the credit card every four to six months.

Vancouver has already tapped the Feds for an increase, its doubtful that they can go to that well again. This means that any future increases will fall squarely on the shoulders of Gordon Campbell’s Liberals.

While the idea to host the Olympics first was brought to the table by the NDP government of the day (1998), it has been a Gordon Campbell production ever since. The Premier frequently touts the Olympics as BC's time to shine, an opportunity to showcase all that we have to offer. He's very much tied his government's agenda to the Games and thus, will be the one to bask in the glory of a financially successful adventure, or duck the tomatoes and rotten fruit should things get off the rails.

Part of the current financial confusion involves trying to determine what “Olympic” related costs are and what are normal Provincial needs costs, a nice little game akin to the old carnie trick the pea under shell game.

Hide an expense in one pile and take it out and move it around later, for British Columbians the shells are beginning to pile up, it would be nice to know which ones actually have the peas!