A high-profile push for Toronto to consider bidding to host Expo in 2025 appears to have kept the dream alive.

After ex-mayors and an ex-premier joined Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam to make the case for a World’s Fair bid, Mayor John Tory said he supports city staff this fall looking at a privately funded feasibility study.

Tory, however, made it clear he won’t support Toronto officially signalling an intention to bid until the provincial and federal governments guarantee they’ll “backstop” the cost of hosting a six-month international showcase.

“It’s just not something the property taxpayers of Toronto can bear on their own,” Tory said of total costs, pegged in the billions of dollars.

“If you look at the city’s financial state . . . it is not such that we could absorb very much of the cost of putting this on, above and beyond infrastructure we might have been contributing to anyway.”

Council’s executive committee unanimously backed a move by Tory to accept the privately funded study, which must still be approved by council next month.

Councillors also agreed that any possible bid to host Expo 2025 should be contingent on financial commitments from the federal and provincial governments that would not take away from any funds allotted to transit, housing or other infrastructure projects.

Tory called it a “cautious” move after some executive members questioned the costs, including an estimated $400-$900 million for security cited by city staff.

Previously, a lack of enthusiasm from Tory’s office, along with a city staff recommendation to not pursue it, appeared to have doomed Wong-Tam’s relentless campaign for an Expo bid. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, however, breathed life into the effort with a letter to Tory and others stating that, should Toronto signal its interest, the federal government will explore “next steps” to support a potential bid.

Former premier David Peterson, who chaired the 2015 Pan Am Games organizing committee, joined Wong-Tam, former mayors Barbara Hall and Senator Art Eggleton, and business and labour leaders supporting a bid.

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime, if it’s squandered here it probably will not come back,” Peterson told reporters at city hall Tuesday. Don’t be “frightened by the money,” he urged Tory and councillors, arguing that, paid over eight years and shared among city, provincial and federal governments, costs would be manageable and exceeded by increased tax revenues and economic development.

A World’s Fair would not just be “a few Serbian dancers running around in pavilions,” Peterson added. Google, Tesla and other firms are spending billions on technology to address the rapid growth of cities, he said — “They will be our partners, as will be all of the other countries, to build the most advanced technological city in the world.”

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Others argued an Expo bid could accelerate transit expansion and jump-start Port Lands development.

That may be true, Tory acknowledged, but he said the city needs to take a “sober, steady, responsible businesslike approach,” to ensure any benefits outweigh the substantial costs.

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