Mayor Naheed Nenshi says he’ll urge councillors to cancel the city’s Olympic bid unless a funding deal is reached over the weekend.

The revelation came in a letter sent late Friday to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

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“If we cannot come to a mutually agreeable conclusion by Monday, I deeply regret that I will have no choice to but request that Calgary City Council cancel the plebiscite and thus terminate the bid; an event none of us want. . . .,” it reads.

Postmedia obtained a copy of the letter, which Nenshi copied to senior officials in the prime minister’s office, as well as Premier Rachel Notley and her chief of staff, Nathan Rotman.

“It is clear there has been a tremendous misunderstanding of the nature of the required funding amongst the three government partners and now we are in a position where we cannot show citizens how the required public contribution could be met,” Nenshi wrote.

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Nenshi also said: “We have been clear from the start that if the government of Canada requires a dollar for dollar match, the project cannot proceed. . .

“I am writing to you today because I fear that we will not be able to come to a mutually acceptable agreement on Calgary’s bid . . . and that we will be forced to terminate the bid even in advance of the Nov 13 plebiscite.”

Nenshi included with his letter an email from Rotman, the province’s key negotiator, to federal officials on Oct. 11.

Rotman said Alberta had a “tentative agreement from the federal government for $1.75 (billion) and any IOC guarantees; the city of Calgary for $370 million and we remain committed of $700 million (in 2018 dollars).”

Among other revelations, that’s the first time a city spend of $370 million has made its way into public view.

Provincial players are also furious that after releasing their $700-million commitment 30 days before the plebiscite , as promised, Ottawa is trying to “jam” them into producing more money.

Photo by David_Bloom David Bloom / David Bloom/Postmedia

On Saturday, provincial Finance Minister Joe Ceci accused Ottawa of “bad faith” in a media scrum at the NDP convention in Edmonton.

“We came to our $700 million number based on a federal commitment of $1.75 billion in 2018 dollars, without any kind of 50-50 arrangement,” he said.

“Yesterday (Friday) we learned that the federal government is moving the goalpost in the fourth quarter, negotiating through the media.

“If they put the goalposts back, we are happy to keep talking, but we’re not going to engage in any kind of bad faith tactics.”

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In his letter to Trudeau, Nenshi insists the point about the inability to match funding has been made many times to federal officials over two years.

Nenshi said options could include Ottawa simply bypassing its matching funding formula, finding other avenues of funding for categories such as security, and using some Green Line costs as matching investment.

The mayor even suggests announcing the funding amounts now and working on the matching issue later.

He further says that “all parties agreed in PyeongChang (at the Olympics) that we would have this contribution amount finalized by June.”

But Ottawa requested a delay. And now, with two weeks to the referendum there is still no funding deal.

The main numbers were communicated to Ottawa as far back as March, Nenshi says, along with “a warning that it was actually impossible for it to work within the (matching) policy.”

All the parties — Calgary’s bid corporation, the city and the province – were shocked when Ottawa said it will require matching funds, and made that known through the media.

None of the players, even negotiators who were working as late as Friday, had any idea it was coming.

What actually happened, in all likelihood, is that the understandings among negotiators finally made it to a federal cabinet meeting, where the key points about both dollar value and matching funds were rejected.

Nenshi ends his letter to Trudeau on a plaintive note of hope: “I am available of course to speak with you or your representatives at any time, day or night, to see if we can salvage this process.”

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald.

Twitter: @DonBraid

Facebook: Don Braid Politics