Twenty fourteen, we hardly knew ye
Well that’s all she wrote. The huge story in these parts is Halifax’s withdraw as a bid city for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The news hit the city like a sledgehammer and obviously left a lot of my co-workers simply stunned by the news. There’s been a lot said and written about the bid, throughout the process. So here’s my take. Yesterday, I had three questions burning through my mind: How did we get to this point? What happened? and What does this mean from here on out?
I’ve spent the past two days just absorbing information, trying to make sense of why the Bid failed and what it would mean. Anything I write here should be preceded with the terms ‘allegedly’, ‘apparently’ and ‘I think’. None of this information is official and some of it might not be true. But this is the story as I understand it.
How Did We Get To This Point?
Unfortunately, there’s a lot that can be written on what went wrong with the Bid. There’s not one particular party involved who can be solely blamed for the failure, nor is there one moment in time that can be pinpointed when the hopeful dreams went off course and began barreling towards destruction. But this much is clear:
- The Bid Committee mismanaged the media and public opinion. There was a well documented silent majority in favour of the bid. Despite claims to the contrary by the No side, most people in Metro and Nova Scotia were in support of the idea of hosting the Commonwealth Games. Unfortunately, the Bid Committee never gave them anything to latch onto and be supportive about, thus fostering a broad amount of negative coverage and unanswered questions.
- The Bid Committee either didn’t keep the Province and the HRM in the loop, or the Province and the HRM did not do their due diligence keeping an eye on the bid process. It appears that some sort of vital communication between the Bid Committee and their two major funding partners was lacking. Things spiralled far too out of control with the price becoming too much for the province and the city, causing them to pull the plug. The original estimate was 785 million, now we’re hearing a final number of 1.7 Billion. That’s a Billion dollar difference, which can’t be a matter of ‘oh, I forgot to carry the one’.
- HRM didn’t understand what they were getting into when they won the right to bid at an international level. This is clear just by the way that the HRM council clearly had no idea what was going on and as a result, looked foolish and amateur in the eyes of the public. More on this later, but it’s safe to say that the city was in a little over their heads.
- The province is limited fiscally for the next few years due to legislation. Due to legislation passed by the Hamm government, the province has an obligation to begin to pay down the deficit. This coupled with dwindling offshore revenue is the reason why Finance Minister Baker is saying that this isn’t going to be a good budget coming down the tubes. Apparently, when all is said and done, the province has about 250 million in capital to spend on everything (roads, education, etc) and that trend should continue for the next few years. Despite the fact that there was cross-party support for the Bid, the combination of bad budgets and a large unwieldy Bid is basically political suicide.
- The Bid mismanaged or underestimated the Federal government. I think it is safe to say that everyone assumed the Feds would be willing to kick in extra cash if needed. That was obviously not the case as a line in the sand at 400 million was drawn and the Federal government would not budge.
What happened on Thursday?
Thursday was an interesting story in itself. Here is a timeline of what happened as far as I can put together.
During the end of January, the Bid Committee came up with that budget of 1.7 Billion. They passed it along to their Board of Directors and then later passed it down to their funding partners in the city and the province.
Doing their due diligence and making sure it made fiscal sense, the province and the city enlisted their own independent study on the budget. The study was apparently finished earlier this week. And this is where the story gets interesting.
Apparently, the provincial Cabinet was supposed to meet on the 20th, which would have given both the city and the province two weeks to digest a report that was apparently in the tune of 400 pages. What happened instead is the Cabinet held an emergency meeting on Wednesday where the decision to walk away was made.
The city heard about this and basically panicked. They held an emergency meeting on Thursday morning, getting their first look at the study. Then, partway through the meeting, everyone’s Blackberries started to go off as news of a press release posted on a NS Government website spread. The press release stated that both the province and the city were dropping the bid. Naturally a large number of city council was upset because the decision was already being spread before they even got an opportunity to vote.
Apparently, the Bid committee made plays towards the city to delay their judgment until the 20th, giving them some extra time to respond to the study and perhaps re-evaluate their numbers in hope to make a bid that was easier for everyone to swallow. According to some, there would have been the right number of votes to defer that decision to give the committee a bit more time. Then, of course, they heard the news from the province and nine members of council walked out of the meeting. Soon afterwards the motion to drop the Bid passed.
The real question is: who at the city made that call and told the province that the city was going to drop their support of the Bid?
What does this all mean from here on out?
There will be no funding for infrastructure in the foreseeable future. The Bid was viewed as the only vehicle to get the necessary plan in place to establish the sporting facilities and programs that are needed. Without the Bid, the funding will not remain available. There are already mentions that the 400 million from the Feds could easily find its way into the coffers of the Vancouver 2010 budget, which is running a little pricey.
The failure could also hurt the image of Halifax, Nova Scotia and Canada as an international host for sporting events. Quitting like this does not look good in the eyes of the sporting community, especially in such a bizarre manner.
On a personal note, not much changes. I still go to work, I still have a job, although some on the Bid Committee are not so lucky. I viewed this as a great opportunity to move up in the sport/technology field that I am in. Now as it stands, there is really little or no place for advancement in the current climate. What this means for me, I haven’t really digested yet. There’s never been a rush to make a decision on if and when I take a next step in my working future. This just changes my view on the future a bit.
This was supposed to be Canada’s chance to host the Commonwealth Games. Halifax won that chance in competition with the rest of Canada. It could have been a great opportunity to develop both the city and the province. Unfortunately, we are left with nothing but a foul taste in our mouth and the smell of a bit of eau de shameful failure.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!
For Reference, this is what Adrienne posted in the Facebook group:
“Here’s what happen. Last week the bid committee met with the mayor and provincial leaders to give our estimates (even though the bid book wasn’t due until May 5th. But, Peter couldn’t wait because of all the negative press and pressure on him) the estimate was $1.7 billion. The province and the municipal government both said it was not doable (even though we have been asking what amounts they are bringing to the table for weeks and WEEKS with one reply. That’s right they never ever said what they could contribute and work with us to prepare a feasible number).
After hearing the $1.7 was too much the bid committee work hard all last week to adjust facilities and projects to bring a lower number to both governments. We presented a 30 page PowerPoint to Peter with the new estimate cost of …drum roll please….. $1.2 billion including inflation costs (first time in Canadian history to include inflation in a bid investment) on Friday March 2nd.The mayor did not educate the counselors on the price and initiated a vote on the original number of $1.7 billion and held a vote to pull the bid on Tuesday March 6th. That’s why counselors are pissed they were misinformed. So Peter and provincial leaders took it upon themselves to make the call.
What this came down to was negative press directed at the municipal and provincial government. They go scared and ran because they might not get enough votes to stay in office. It’s disgusting to know these are our leaders and are support to be looking out for us but, when it comes down to it it’s about them. Bad media, poor communication, self-destructive leaders.
The price was not too high. The price we will pay now is going to be astronomical (we will never be chosen to be a host city for anything in my life time or any of your, there was going to be more federal money coming to the bid so $400,000++ is gone, children still don’t have the basic facilities and opportunities the rest of the country has, high performance athletes that had a hope of staying Atlantic will have to move, any success from our citizens will lead to them leaving and taking their knowledge, expertise’s, progressive thinking and children away. Health care will suffer we are still fat and full of asthma. The list goes on).
This is going to make one hell of a case study someday. What a sad time for Canada.”
Comment by forbes — 10.3.2007 @ 16:09
Also for reference, a column by Stephen Maher in the Herald:
LAST WINTER, during the federal election campaign, I went out to Big Tancook Island to see how the people there were going to vote.
Big Tancook was long famous for the industry and skill of its people. The sauerkraut, schooners and fruit wines produced on the island for generations were admired far and wide, the craft of skilled, admirable, hard-working people.
Now, there are only a handful of working fishermen left on the island, and house after house has one resident — usually an elderly widow, watching TV, wiling away the hours and days.
This is our future. Nova Scotia is becoming more and more like a retirement community.
The decision to kill our bid for the Commonwealth Games is likely to be popular with older people.
And, politically speaking, older people matter more. The young people are leaving.
From 1991 to 2005, 38,737 Nova Scotians moved to Alberta. They are working people, risk-takers, young people, the kind of people who earn paycheques, have babies, pay taxes and run community organizations.
As our population ages, it will become increasingly difficult for working people to pay enough taxes to provide services for a mushrooming group of pensioners, particularly in rural areas.
This increasing tax burden, and the fact that the pensioners exercise a great deal of political power, may make the province a less appealing place for young people to stay.
Because Nova Scotia missed much of the industrialization that happened in the rest of the country after the Second World War, our province is poorer and more rural (37 per cent) than the rest of Canada (21 per cent).
Young people are leaving rural areas, not just because there are fewer jobs in our resource industries but also because they want to move away, preferring life in Calgary or Halifax to life in Parrsboro or Canso.
Ask our politicians about this trend and they talk about efforts to keep the kids in small communities, you know, building windmills or telecommuting on the information superhighway. This cheerful nonsense is understandably popular in small communities.
The reality is that we are hemorrhaging young people from rural Nova Scotia. We can try to keep these people in Halifax, or we can stand in the driveway and wave goodbye and hope they come home from Calgary for Christmas.
People who think about this problem very hard tend to find it depressing.
“When a region loses population, it has a domino effect,” regional development expert Donald Savoie of the Universite de Moncton said last year. “It’s a spiral. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned, it’s that success breeds success and failure breeds failure. So when you start to depopulate a region, you’re asking for trouble.”
So how do we keep young people in Nova Scotia? What kind of place must Halifax become to keep them there, and persuade some of the students who come from other provinces to stay?
Perhaps the kind of place where you can take a high-speed ferry to the stadium in Dartmouth for a concert or to watch a CFL game.
The decision this week, by Halifax Mayor Peter Kelly and Premier Rodney MacDonald, to kill the Commonwealth Games bid would seem to make it less likely that Halifax will be that kind of place.
This is not to say that the bid committee — which increased the Games budget, in secret, to $1.7 billion — deserved the confidence of the public.
We may never know whether Mr. Kelly and Mr. MacDonald were wisely killing a white elephant or were merely afraid of a risk that did not offer enough political advantage.
But it is hard to shake the impression that we have timidly taken a step backwards, that what the premier calls the “New Nova Scotia” is really not new at all, but old and afraid of risk and change.
It’s hard to remember the last significant investment in a public building or project in Halifax of any note. The Metro Centre?
Haligonians are not even enthusiastic on private investments, like the proposed Twisted Sisters buildings, which would add density and glamour to the downtown.
And if Haligonians are unsure that they want growth and development, the city can’t expect much help from the rest of the province.
Our politics leaves downtown Halifax far from the centre of decision-making.
Progressive Conservative governments are elected by rural Nova Scotia, and if they want to get re-elected, they would be foolish to take risks or spend money on Halifax, where they have little chance of winning seats. Many rural Nova Scotians resent Halifax and point out, factually, that it already benefits from large amounts of public spending.
And our electoral boundaries give rural voters greater say than urban voters. In the last election, for example, there were 6,673 names on the voters list in Argyle and 18,716 in Halifax Clayton Park. Those votes in Argyle are worth three times as much.
Further, the amalgamation of Halifax Regional Municipality has put suburban and rural voters in the driver’s seat at city hall.
No wonder the mayor and the premier decided to pull the plug on the Commonwealth Games bid.
Politically, older, rural people are in charge in Nova Scotia and they will make decisions that suit them — spending money paving country roads, delivering health care and running the ferry out to Big Tancook.
That’s the way politics works in Nova Scotia. If you don’t like it, you can always move to Alberta.
http://herald.ns.ca/Opinion/563820.html
Comment by forbes — 10.3.2007 @ 16:10