The strategy behind Vancouver’s Games was actually not so much about sport as it was to stimulate real estate and tourism in a province that had long wanted to diversify from a resource-based economy. But at what cost?
The last tally by the Office of the Auditor General found it was costing taxpayers at least $2.5 billion, but anyone with a calculator can add up $6 billion in direct and indirect Olympic costs. The recession, the inconveniencing of a whole city to make way for a 30 percent bump in downtown traffic and the inevitable post-Games paying of the bills will mean that memories of the Canadian gold medal-winners on home ice and snow will ultimately be the reminders of the last mega-event.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimated the Games would pump $4.2 billion into the B.C. economy from 2002 to 2020. That sounds like a lot until you consider that the province’s gross domestic product was almost $198 billion in 2008 alone. If the retail industry suffers in B.C. during the Games like it did in Utah during Salt Lake 2002, then the benefits will melt further.
For the full story: http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/02/08/VanMe … ign=080210
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