Quote:
Originally Posted by madmigs
Having the Olympics no doubt raised Vancouver's visibility in the world and increased national pride, but strictly from a financial/economic standpoint we may never know if the benefits outweigh the costs as it is hard to say what would have happened without it.
Also keep in mind that the approx 1 billion is just the province of BC's portion. As per http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100709/national/oly_bc_bills, it is estimated the fed's spent another 1.2 billion and CoV estimates it spend 554 million(not including its investment in the athletes village). Which adds up to about 2.75 billion for direct taxpayer costs.
And while I agree with what was said earlier that crown corporation expenditures should be separate from gov't expenditures, whatever the crown corps spent should be included in the total Olympics cost. Let's say they spent 100 million bringing total costs to 2.85 billion.
Add in sea to sky - 785 million and Canada line - 2.1 billion and now the total jumps to 5.75 billion. While both of these items will no doubt have been expenditures that needed to be done sooner or later, they were pushed up probably by many years due to the Olympics. And since the other infrastructure costs like the arenas, etc are including in Olympic costs(even though they are still being used after), should not these infrastructure costs also be included? |
So many things wrong with this one post...somehow, every infrastructure project from 2003-2010 is an Olympic cost, as if a city of 2.2-million were to stand still and not build anything. But the Olympics came into town and we had to get our lazy asses off the chair and start building crap, right?