TORONTO

A group of prominent world’s fair boosters held court Tuesday to sing the praises of hosting Expo 2025 in Toronto.

The pitch, organized by Urban Land Institute Toronto, came on the heels of a civic report saying the city should put any work on a bid for the Expo on hold until provincial and federal financial support is in place. The Expo bid is on the agenda for next week’s executive committee meeting.

A World Fair would attract 40 million visitors, Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam said during the event at the Toronto Board of Trade’s downtown offices.

She said the 356 hectares in the Port Lands would be the perfect Expo site — a location currently not generating any revenue, she noted.

Wong-Tam said member countries involved in Expos would build pavilions using Canadian labour and materials.

“The only thing stopping us from winning (an Expo bid) is ourselves,” she insisted.

The rewards from such events are “unbelievable,” said former premier David Peterson, who was chair of last summer’s 2015 Pan Am Games.

He cautioned the supportive crowd that grief would accompany any bid as the media will relay how much someone in the Expo committee paid for a cup of coffee or that it cost $5 to comb out the mascot’s hair.

Peterson said “the leadership has to come from the city” and that it “has to have a vision.”

Toronto needs to use an event like Expo to solve the traffic headaches, he added.

The Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions selects host cities for world’s fairs.