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Toronto needs affordable housing, better transit, new athletic facilities and more green space. Why did we have to land the Pan Am Games to get them? That's politics, 21st century style
A FEW DAYS AFTER TORONTO won its bid for the 2015 Pan American Games, a letter to the editor appeared in The Globe and Mail. Written by a man named Tim Jeffery, it asked a sensible question: "Why does it take the Pan American Games to build amateur athletic facilities, affordable housing and transit upgrades that Canada's largest city has sorely needed for decades?" Mr. Jeffery's query seemed more rhetorical than inquisitive. What he wanted to make clear was that the $i.4-billion budget for the two-week event had miraculously materialized from coffers that, until then, had been as chronically unfilled as a Toronto pothole.
He put his finger on the odd way that civil societies work in the post-Montreal, post-L. A. ,post- Barcelona, post-Sydney, post-Beijing world. What is it about an Olympics-like event that suddenly makes possible things that somehow were impossible before? An aquatics centre, a velodrome, two 50-metre io-lane pools, and an athletes' village in the West Don Lands (to name but a few of the items on the winning bid's proposal) were suddenly staring at a green light. Other projects, like a desperately needed rail link to the airport and regular GO Train service to Hamilton, became instant priorities. Supporters of the Pan Am Games promise that once the athletes pack up and leave, we'll end up with all their new facilities to enjoy for ourselves, and the athletes' village can become much needed affordable housing.
Lurking behind the Pan Am Games is the monstrous shadow of the Olympics, and since people don't tend to have strong feelings about the former, they borrow from their suspicion of the latter to predict what lies in store for Toronto in 201S: massive cost overruns, traffic nightmares and unrealistic hopes of long-term sustainability. And while the games' supporters envision enormous benefits, it's worth remembering that Winnipeg has twice hosted the Pan Am Games- in 1967 and in 1999. And Winnipeg is still Winnipeg.
Mr. Jeffery's letter puts him in the camp of the suspicious, a position that can be summarized in three words:...