CANMORE – Canmore council voted Tuesday night (Nov. 6) to support a 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Olympic Games bid, but it wasn’t a unanimous decision and it came with a very specific condition.
Canmore has been seeking a deal on what has been an elusive issue for more than a decade – resort municipality status – and with it a new revenue source to fund tourism services and infrastructure for the resort community.
Chief administrative officer Lisa de Soto said the municipality is at the negotiating table with the other levels of government and is asking for a two per cent hotel tax on rooms in the community to fund the services needed to host the Games in 2026 and cultural programming before it arrives.
“We are requesting we have two per cent added to hotel taxes that would generate for us $2 million a year and fund essential services, a celebration plaza and cultural programming,” de Soto said.
“That is what we are trying to negotiate into a multi-party agreement.
“We know the province is going into an election and this is a difficult time to ask for a new tax, I get that … but we need satisfactory terms that are sufficient to cover the operating costs and delivery (of the Games) and we will bring that back to you hopefully before the bid is submitted, so you can remove that condition to support the bid or not support the bid.”
Without the new revenue source, it is unclear how Canmore would pay for its requirements to be part of the Olympic Games in terms of the $3 million in essential services like snow removal and increased garbage and recycling, creation of a celebration plaza and participation in the cultural Olympiad leading up to the Games.
However, de Soto detailed for council the budget plan for the $116 million athletes village proposed for Palliser Trail on lands owned by Canmore Community Housing Corporation. The HostCo would provide $42 million, Canmore would provide $6 million in land value and $4 million in servicing and partial funding for flood mitigation and a pedestrian overpass.
The remaining funding would be funded through a debenture worth $66 million. It is expected that the sale of the units as perpetually affordable housing would generate $64 million to repay the debt.
While Mayor John Borrowman and five councillors voted to support the conditional motion recommended by administration, Coun. Joanna McCallum voted against it, citing concerns over the long-term effects an Olympics could have on the community and the lack of detailed information on how Canmore would pay for its commitments under the proposed hosting plan.
For Borrowman, the opportunities possible from an Olympic and Paralympic Games outweigh the concerns, even though he also shares many of them with those in the community who took the time to express them with council at a public hearing last week.
“I am speaking in support for many reasons and first and foremost I am strongly motivated by housing in the athletes village,” said the mayor. “Two hundred and forty-two units of affordable housing is more than we have accomplished in close to 20 years of effort here in the Town of Canmore.
“As well, the project will help deliver on other critical infrastructure like flood mitigation and a pedestrian overpass that is required to envision any new development in that area, which includes almost our entire inventory of lands for future affordable housing.”
“As another consideration, I believe hosting the Games fits the spirit of Canmore and our character as a mountain sport community molded by the 1988 Games and this continues to inform how it is we think about ourselves.”
Borrowman said Canmore and Canada has an opportunity to lead in the world when it comes to clean sport, leverage the Olympics to address issues the community faces like affordability, traffic and congestion, and environmental sustainability.
Coun. Esmé Comfort echoed that this is an opportunity to be a model for how to take on a $4.8 billion operational and capital plan and host the world for 50 days in 2026.
“What I heard (at the pubic hearing) was a lot of fear – what if this and what if that,” Comfort said. “But what if we do it right? What if we do it the way it should be done? What are the benefits that will come to our community?
“Yes, we need to be very careful and look at the risks, but we let’s also look at what the positives are.”
McCallum put forward four amendments to the recommended motion and all but one failed. The main reason for the amendments, she said, was to address the issues she heard from the community for things like security costs, housing construction overruns and securing resort municipality status.
Without those conditions included in specific language in the approval, she said she couldn’t support the motion.
“I find myself in a position where we had a moment of negotiating from a position of strength and it doesn’t feel like it is there anymore,” McCallum said. “In December I made it clear I needed to understand how this bid would address economic development, improve livability and increase affordability in our community because these are not our grandmother’s Olympics these are the new Olympics.
“Those four amendments to me represented what Canmore would require to survive the Olympics and unfortunately a lack of support for those means a lack of support from myself moving forward with this process.”
Councillors Vi Sandford, Karen Marra, Jeff Hilstad and Rob Seeley all expressed support for moving forward, but with the clear message that it is conditional on resort municipality status.
“We need a good funding source,” Hilstad said. “This motion speaks to finding one that satisfies us and if that does not happen it all comes back and we get to have fun again.
“I have been struggling with this a lot – going back and forth. I can see the positive and negative on both sides and the risks, but we have done a lot to mitigate those … But I want to see what funding we will get, so I will support this.”
