Majority of Torontonians support Olympic bid: Poll

Some 61 per cent of Torontonians told Forum Research they support Toronto vying for the 2024 summer Olympics.

Thestar.com
July 28, 2015
By David Rider

More than six in 10 Torontonians want their city to bid to host the 2024 summer Olympic Games, a new poll says.

Forum Research asked 755 residents on Sunday, as the successful Pan Am Games wrapped up, “Do you support or oppose Toronto making a bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games?”

Some 61 per cent said they support a bid. Thirty per cent were opposed and 9 per cent said they didn’t know.

“There’s a warm halo emanating from the Pan Am Games right now and it would appear citizens no longer fear the potential congestion and cost of an Olympics,” Forum president Lorne Bozinoff said in an interview Monday.

The margin of error for the interactive voice response telephone survey is plus or minus 4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. Data is sometimes statistically weighted by age, region and other variables to reflect the actual population according to census data.

Bozinoff noted that Olympic bid support is consistent across Toronto, unlike other issues that reveal an urban-suburban divide.

Younger Torontonians may be recalling the successful 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Support is lowest among older Torontonians and those who say they voted Progressive Conservative in the last provincial election.

Forum also wanted to see if city councillors should be wary of backing an Olympic bid.

Asked “Would you vote for a councillor who supported an Olympic games bid or not?”, 52 per cent said yes, 26 per cent said no and 22 per cent did not know.

“In Toronto’s previous summer Olympics bid (for the 2008 Games hosted by Beijing) there was significant opposition, and it was a bit of a club people could wave at their councillor,” Bozinoff said. “It’s early, but I am not seeing any of that this time around.”

Potential 2024 hosts have until mid-September to submit applications to the International Olympic Committee. Rome, Paris and Hamburg have said they intend to vie for the Games.

But Boston, chosen as the U.S. bidder by that country’s Olympic committee, balked Wednesday. Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said he did not want to expose his city to the financial risk.

Toronto Mayor John Tory, inundated with questions in recent days over a possible Olympic bid, said Toronto needs to wait for the Pan Am “dust to settle.”

But Tory said he will hold a “broad consultation” on the question, including city council members, residents, businesses, unions and sports organizations. He could not say if an application letter would require the support of city council, which is not scheduled to meet until Sept. 30.

“I've often said, long before I was the mayor, that the great benefit of participating in some of these international events is that it gives you deadlines,” Tory told reporters after a transit announcement. “The show must go on and you have to get things done in time for the show, whatever it happens to be ... But you can't make the decision on that basis alone.

“Nobody's being stampeded into anything here.”

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair expressed cautious optimism about a potential Toronto bid during an interview with CTV.

“Having seen the fantastic success of the Pan Am Games, I’m optimistic that Toronto would be able to put together a bid for the 2024 Olympics,” Mulcair, campaigning ahead of an expected fall election call, told the network. “I think it has to be costed very carefully, having seen what’s happened in the cases of other Olympics in the past.”