Ottawa to back Toronto's bid for Pan Am Games
Aug 07, 2008 07:07 PM
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THE CANADIAN PRESS
The federal government has agreed to support the City of Toronto's bid to host the 2015 Pan Am Games.
Ontario government officials received word late Thursday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has agreed to throw Ottawa's support behind Toronto's bid, which will also involve municipalities in Niagara and Durham regions and as far north as Lake Simcoe.
The federal approval has cleared the way for Premier Dalton McGuinty to travel to Beijing next week to lobby the Pan American Sports Organization voting members, who are in China for the Olympics.
"I'm pleased that in our discussions with Ontario that we've been able to get to this place where the federal government can join in the support," said federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. "It's good news for the (Greater Toronto Area) for sports facilities and it's good news for Ontario. It's good news for Canada."
McGuinty had warned for weeks that Toronto's bid would suffer if he didn't get federal support, and said he would have had to cancel his trip to China.
He said all the other cities hoping to host the 2015 Pan Am Games would be in China – with the support of their federal governments.
Flaherty defended the amount of time it took his government to reach the decision to support the Games bid.
"We have a duty, and I sure do as minister of finance, to make sure that we're not getting into something that's going to be not a value-for-money situation for Canadian taxpayers," he said. "So we had to do at least our preliminary work on this, which we've done. So we're pleased to support the Games."
Ontario wants about $600 million from Ottawa for the Pan Am Games, which are estimated to cost $1.77 billion to stage, but expected to bring $2 billion in economic activity and create 17,000 jobs in everything from construction to hosting.
Flaherty declined to say how much the federal government will contribute, noting that still needs to be negotiated.
"One has to look at a couple of major issues here," he said. ``One is the cost of security – who bears what part of the cost for security. ... There's also the question of infrastructure investments because a lot of the investments that relate to the Pan Am Games relate to permanent infrastructure, which can be dealt with in different ways with the federal infrastructure funding that we have available."
An estimated 10,000 athletes and coaching staff would attend the 2015 Games.
The province said one benefit of Toronto getting the Pan Am Games would be the construction of some much-needed sports facilities in the Golden Horseshoe region, noting Ontario has not hosted a significant international athletic event since the 1930s.
Other cities believed to bidding against Toronto are Bogota, Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela; and Lima, Peru.
The Pan American Games are open to all countries in the Americas and are held every four years.
The last was in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, and the next will be in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2011.
The site of the 2015 Games will be announced next year.
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