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The Canada Day Parade, one of the marquee events of Vancouver’s July 1 celebrations, has been cancelled.

The Port of Vancouver, which is hosting the Canada Day party at Canada Place for the 31st straight year, says the parade, an annual event since 2009, was cut due to rising costs.

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“Please note that after careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to no longer host the Canada Day parade. As overall costs continue to increase for such a large event, we are focusing our resources on the core elements of Canada Day at Canada Place to ensure we can continue to produce the best possible event for all attendees,” reads a statement on the Canada Place website.

Canada Day at Canada Place, a free event with musical performances and fireworks that attracts more than 250,000 people to Vancouver’s waterfront, will still go ahead but without the parade.

“Production costs, labour costs, artist costs have all gone up significantly in the last five years,” said Gillian Behnke, communications manager at Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. “Security and policing costs have also gone up but there are only a portion of the total costs and seen as completely reasonable for such a large-scale event.”

Behnke says the opportunity is there for another corporate partner to take over the Canada Day parade.

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