For the most part, in one way or another, I have been involved in organized and competitive sports and recreation since I was eight years old. I love participating in and watching athletic endeavors. And while it’s great that the Pan Am Games enjoyed success, even though we’re still awaiting the final costs, I am steadfastly against Toronto spending a nickel to go after the Olympics.

There’s little doubt that the mayor will cheerlead for a bid before the mid-September deadline. The Pan Am euphoria and the typical ego-driven chauvinism that drives cities and nations to bid for the Olympics will overshadow genuine reflection on whether this will be good for our city.

We are already being bombarded by the usual banter of the benefits of hosting the Olympics. Toronto’s enhanced place on the world stage will be proffered, despite of our already excellent global status. We will hear about how the games will bring further infrastructure investment and, in this context, there will be those who talk about how a new Olympic stadium will increase our chances to lure an NFL team to Toronto.

We will be told how the Olympics affect athletic and recreational participation. Without question, a movement that can encourage the broadest and most democratic participation in sports and lifelong recreation is a good thing. But the shiny and costly Olympics are a grossly over-rated mechanism that is terrific for far too few.

And when the bid is complete we will be treated to a budget that is impossible to contain, in part due to the unpredictable security costs in a world nine years down the road.

Without question, my views are tainted by living in Montreal in 1976. Mayor Jean Drapeau, who gave us the remarkably successful Expo 67 that, indeed, put Montreal on the international map, could not resist an Olympics.

The environmentally and financially disastrous 1976 Olympics is still part of a sad legacy. When that bid was filed, McGill architecture professor Joe Baker produced an alternative way to spend half of what the city would have to commit to the Olympics. Baker produced an urban plan that would turn a major part of Montreal into a pedestrian mall with moving sidewalks and transportation and pollution solutions, providing Montreal with something truly remarkable for the world to admire.

As Toronto’s bid unfolds, there will also be those who talk about what our city could do with the inevitable cost-overrun that is usually borne by the host city. We will hear from childcare advocates who dream about a world-class system. We will hear from the affordable housing advocates who will naturally be told their dreams will come true with a spanking new Olympic village.

Interestingly, last year, the Star launched its remarkable Big Ideas campaign to encourage citizens and urban experts to offer ideas that would improve the quality of life for our city. The process was designed to inform the mayoralty race. I would encourage the winner of that contest, along with others who really think the Olympics would be good for the city, to match up the city’s costs of an Olympics with the Star campaign’s top 10 Big Ideas. Seeking the Olympics wasn’t on the long list, let alone the final one. Affordable childcare was.

My hope is that those who argue for a better Toronto with ideas that require a fraction of the Olympic costs will be respected, that their ideas will be properly evaluated rather than dismissed as nay-saying without vision.

Not only do I want Toronto to stay clear of an Olympic bid, but the entire international competitive process needs to be scrapped. Fraught with the worst kind of backroom politics and runaway wastefulness, decision-making by the so-called Olympic movement strays too easily from its core values of respect and fairness. “We’re not as bad as FIFA” is an apt bumper-sticker for the Olympics, which abandoned its special amateur competition ethos in the early 1990s.

What’s the answer? These profligate competitions for securing the Olympics should be replaced by permanent sites. Naturally, Greece should be provided the resources to be the summer site, and let’s have a truly intelligent and transparent process to choose a permanent winter site. I vote for Vancouver!

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In the meantime, I say no to a Toronto bid for 2024.