CALGARY—It has had many close calls and near misses, but Calgary’s Olympic bid faces an all-but-certain end after Tuesday’s decisive vote.

According to unofficial Elections Calgary results, a majority 56.4 per cent of voters cast their plebiscite ballots against continuing with a bid for the 2026 Winter Games, while 43.6 per cent voted in favour.

Because the funds the provincial and federal governments offered for the cost of hosting are conditional on a “yes” in the mandated plebiscite, the bid almost certainly won’t go on from here. City council still must make the move to stop work on the bid official, which both the mayor and the Olympic assessment committee chair said they expect to happen Monday.

The plebiscite saw about 40 per cent voter turnout, with 304,774 total votes cast out of a total of 767,734 eligible voters, according to a 2018 voters list. The total number of votes cast in the 2017 municipal election was about 80,000 votes more.

At the packed “yes” side party Tuesday night, the crowd’s audible chatter crescendoed as they gathered to hear the results of the vote just before 10 p.m.

But as a hush fell to hear the final result, the energy in the room disappeared.

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Calgary Bid Corporation CEO Mary Moran and chair Scott Hutcheson took the stage to thank volunteers, bringing the crowd together for one last round of applause for the team that campaigned to bring the Games to Calgary, as volunteers and supporters cried and consoled one another.

“I think we go back to the drawing board and we look at where we started and what happened through the process. We’re not going to blame anyone,” Hutcheson said. “Maybe nothing went wrong. Maybe this community right now doesn’t want an Olympics and therefore everything went right.”

Calgary residents voted no to bidding for the 2026 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in a plebiscite on Tuesday, though city council will get the final say. Former Olympic bobsledder Helen Upperton says she’s “heartbroken.” (The Canadian Press)

Moran, who will now return to her job as Calgary Economic Development CEO, said she won’t give up on promoting Calgary to the world.

“I’m committed to it and I firmly believe that we have to work harder on it. For me, I’m just going to use the tools that we have today and continue to sell as hard as I can, and sell this city to talent and companies and investors to ensure that we can evolve our economy.”

A statement from BidCo says that in the coming weeks, the organization will wrap up operations, including final accounting and reporting work to be submitted to the city, province and feds.

As the corresponding “no” side party waited in Calgary’s Kensington neighbourhood, the crowd was small, but loud. Partygoers hovered anxiously around a whiteboard where volunteers from the No Calgary Olympics group added up early, unofficial totals by hand with numbers sent in by No Calgary Olympics scrutineers stationed at polls across the city.

When the city announced the results, the partygoers waited for a moment of nervous silence, eyes fixed on their phone screens. But as the final number appeared, a roar of celebration took over — the “No” side supporters cheered, high-fived and embraced, flashing thumbs-ups and wide smiles for the cameras.

“Calgarians don’t want this,” said Franco Terrazzano, the Alberta director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

No Calgary Olympics organizer Erin Waite said she views the results as a sign that Calgarians thought seriously about the potential risks that come with hosting the Games.

“A ‘no’ vote says that they saw the excitement of hosting the Olympic Games and the fun that that event could drive, but weighed that against all the other factors that are important to consider,” she said.

Daniel Gauld, founder of No Calgary Olympics, said his organization can’t take a lot of credit for voters deciding against what he called a “terrible idea.”

“We didn’t have the budget, we didn’t have the signage, we had 1,000 Twitter followers,” he said. “This was Calgarians doing their research.”

Gauld also said he believes any kind of Olympic bid in the near future is “dead” and called for Calgarians to come together to find “real solutions” to the city’s economic woes.

Tuesday’s decision follows a majority of Calgary city councillors voting in favour of stopping the bid process two weeks ago, with Ward 8 Councillor and Olympic assessment committee chair Evan Woolley submitting a series of recommendations that included cancelling the plebiscite. That move ultimately failed because it didn’t clear the higher required threshold of 10 council votes.

Woolley said he doesn’t feel that council presented a funding deal that was good enough or timely enough for Calgarians to have enough information to make a decision.

After the plebiscite results, he said council will move quickly to stop the bid process.

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“The recommendations will look very, very similar to the ones I moved two weeks ago,” he said.

“There’s a number of administrative things we have to do, but the motion will be quite simple, and then there will be work behind the scenes.”

Ward 11 Councillor Jeromy Farkas described the vote as a “come-from-behind victory” for the “no” side.

“It’s been a real David versus Goliath on steroids when you think of the resources available to promote the ‘yes’ side of the bid,” he said.

Yes Calgary blanketed the city with campaign materials over the last week, including lawn signs, advertisements and robocalls, some featuring Mayor Naheed Nenshi describing the reasons he is a “yes” vote.

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Meanwhile, the No Calgary Olympics campaign held a rally at Olympic Plaza on Saturday urging Calgarians to vote against the bid, but they had comparably fewer volunteers and resources to work with.

Ward 4 Councillor Sean Chu, who has been a vocal opponent of the Olympic bid, welcomed the plebiscite results.

“Congratulations, Calgarians. Your common sense prevailed,” he said.

Chu said he continues to believe that hosting is bad for the city’s finances.

“It’s like your household: you already have the debt of your mortgage. And (on the ‘yes’ side), it’s like, ‘Let’s go buy a Ferrari.’

“Is this how you run your finances? I don’t think so.”

Nenshi, a longtime Olympic fan who, unsurprisingly, cast a ballot in favour of hosting the 2026 Games earlier in the day, expressed his disappointment after the plebiscite results were released.

“I was hoping for a yes vote,” said Nenshi, flanked by councillors Gian-Carlo Carra, Jeff Davison and George Chahal inside Calgary’s municipal complex.

“But ultimately the people have spoken, the people have spoken in big numbers and the people have spoken clearly,” Nenshi said, rejecting assertions the debate over whether to host the Games was divisive.

“What we had was passionate people talking about the future of the community and talking about what they believe in,” he said.

The mayor said he anticipated council to debate the results at Monday’s meeting before voting to officially suspend the city’s bid.

“Based on the results today, I don’t see any desire to move forward with (an Olympic bid for) 2030,” Nenshi said. “This was not a rushed process. This was an opportunity over the last 2½ years to have a very, very open conversation with Calgarians and they’ve given us their opinion.”

The Calgary Olympic Bid Corp. estimated the cost of hosting the Games in Calgary at $5.1 billion, with the city, province and federal government contributing $2.875 billion.

That budget, and a subsequent cost-sharing proposal, came after BidCo originally set the cost of hosting at $5.2 billion, with $3 billion coming from public funds — but after a negotiating deadlock and Woolley’s move to cancel the plebiscite, a late-night funding proposal revived the bid process.

According to a funding proposal currently on the table, Calgary would pay $370 million in cash, plus an additional $20 million to purchase an insurance policy. The provincial government has committed $700 million, and Ottawa will pay about $1.4 billion if Calgary’s hosting bid succeeds.

Ward 9 Councillor Carra, who lent his voice to the “yes” campaign in the days leading up to the vote, said he thinks the city still needs to consider how to effectively present itself to the world.

“If we’re not using the Olympic Games to do that, we’re going to have to do that anyway. The conversation becomes: how do we do that in a meaningful way?” he said.

He added that challenges remain without the Olympic bid, including figuring out a way to boost the stock of affordable housing in Calgary and upgrading the sport venues left from the 1988 Games — two benefits that BidCo said would come from hosting in 2026.

Ward 12 Councillor Shane Keating said he also worries about what the plan is to upgrade the city’s sport infrastructure without the Olympics.

“All of the renovations to McMahon Stadium, BMO Centre, Olympic Oval, Canada Olympic Park, none of that will happen,” he said.

The 2026 draft hosting plan also proposed to build a new mid-sized arena and field house for Calgary. The latter project has been a city infrastructure priority for years, but has remained unfunded.

“The field house — which is an absolute shame we don’t have one yet — will still have to be funded at some point in time,” Keating said.

Official vote results, including a ward-by-ward breakdown of voter turnout, is expected to be released Friday.

Two other bids are currently in the running for the 2026 Games: Stockholm, Sweden and a joint bid from the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina. The deadline for submitting bid books to the International Olympic Committee is in January 2019, and the final host city decision is slated for June.

With files from Emma McIntosh, Andrew Jeffrey and Trevor Howell

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