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The committee spending $5 million to explore a potential bid for the 2026 Winter Games launched an online questionnaire earlier this week, asking Calgarians to weigh in.

Results from the survey at ShouldCalgaryBid.com will be incorporated into the Calgary Bid Exploration Committee’s final report to city council. Postmedia’s Annalise Klingbeil spoke to five experts, who completed the detailed questionnaire, about what they thought of the survey.

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(view the survey here)

‘The usual propaganda’

Janice Forsyth

Associate professor, school of kinesiology, at Western University and former director of the school’s International Centre for Olympic Studies

“I think it’s kind of the usual propaganda to generate support for an Olympic bid because there’s a lot of unstated things in the questions and even in the little bits of information that the public is given. If you take a look at the data (given in the survey), in terms of economic impact of the Games, it’s all superficial and very general. There’s some head-nodding towards, ‘oh we need to be really careful in terms of planning,’ but there’s no real explanation for who really benefits from hosting the Games. It’s all done in a way that makes it sound very good for the public. This is very typical of the narrative of bids that are moving forward.”