FIFA Vancouver - A $700 Million Circus

 

If anyone ever needed an example of how mixed up Vancouver and the Province of B.C. have gotten with their priorities, never mind their math, you only need to look at the FIFA sponsorship they signed up for to really give your head a shake. The cost to host a portion of the 2026 games has ballooned from an initial estimate of $260 million 3 years ago to $700 million and rising. This works out to $100 million per game and there is no way of getting out of this ludicrous contract.

The government trots out all sorts of rosey predictions of how this will pay for itself in the end with a boost to the economy by all the people staying in the city to attend the games plus the increased future tourism the games will generate as a result of Vancouver being in the world spotlight. What a load of bunk. Vancouver is already well known in the world thanks to Expo 1986 and the 2010 Winter Olympics with the main result being a lot of high-rise construction and overheated property values.

Contrast this with Taylor Swift's recent appearance that didn't cost the city anything and generated a $157 million economic impact. There was $97 million in direct spending for hotels and restaurants etc. and 70% of it was driven by fans coming from outside Vancouver. And to top things off Taylor Swift ended up raising over $2 million for local charities while donating $100,000 to the food bank.

In 2022 voters had to approve a capital borrowing plan of $495 million but strangely there was no voter approval required for the $700+ million for the FIFA event. Already the projected cost of the Aquatic Centre replacement project has gone from $140 million to $170 million and the pool size has been cut in half but at least the money is for something that will last 50 years as opposed to only 7 nights. While the visiting soccer players will have practise fields at their disposal during the games, the swimming community will have to do without a pool for over 3+ years while a new one is being built because the city couldn't come up with the money or the plan to build one in a different location before tearing the old pool down.

Meanwhile TransLink, the Metro Vancouver transit authourity providing bus and Skytrain service is projecting an annual $600 million deficit. A referendum to fund the transit service with a tiny increase in the sales tax was defeated so now the various levels of government are trying to find some other way of squeezing the money out of the taxpayer's pockets. This is on top of the $1.5 billion dollar capital budget for expanding the bus and rapid transit corridors. Transit is an essential service, unlike soccer, yet how is it $700 million magically appears for FIFA but there's no money for our overcrowded bus/Skytrain service? 

Probably the biggest problem facing Vancouver is the Downtown Eastside with its estimated 7,000 drug addicted and mentally challenged street people that have infested an area of approximately 30 square blocks. A new healing centre has opened on the site of the old Riverview Hospital where these people used to be housed but it only has 100 beds and it cost $100 million to build. That works out to $1 million per addict and a potential bill of $7 billion if we want to ever clean up the mess that has been made by closing the original Riverview. Still $700 million would go some way to getting started on a long term problem rather than for just a few nights of entertainment.

Our taxes keep going up but we can't seem to maintain what we already have. Nor does it seem that we know how to prioritize what's important. The Roman Emperors knew that in order to keep the people in line all you needed was bread and circuses. $700 million for FIFA is nothing more than a very expensive circus and as long as everyone has enough bread to eat I guess that's all we're going to get.