Toronto still discussing possible Expo 2025 bid

Letter from Mayor John Tory invites Bureau International des Expositions secretary-general to Toronto this winter

Thestar.com
July 28, 2015
By Lauren Pelley

While Toronto mulls a 2024 summer Olympic Games bid in the afterglow of the successful Pan Am Games, city officials are also keeping Expo 2025 in their sights.

The Star obtained a July 5 letter from Mayor John Tory to Vicente Gonzalez Loscertales, secretary-general of the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), which oversees the major world expositions.

In the letter, Tory thanks Loscertales for a June meeting at the BIE office, and invites him to Toronto in November or December to “deliver a luncheon keynote address and to participate on a panel discussion about the power of Expos to transform cities” in front of an audience of business leaders, community-builders and others.

“I would be pleased for you to visit Toronto and share your insight and advice on bidding for and hosting Expo 2025,” Tory wrote.

The Mayor’s office confirmed Tory sent the letter but he was not available to comment on Tuesday.

“Expos, like other major city-building projects, have a capacity to stimulate community and economic development, and deliver on significant infrastructure projects,” read a statement from his office.

“With the Pan Am/Parapan Am Games ongoing now is not the time to discuss a bid for an Expo. Obviously such a bid would have to be in partnership with other governments and partners.”

Timing aside, continued discussions between the city and BIE are in the works. Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam, a vocal supporter of Toronto hosting the international fair who is also listed on the letter, said Loscertales is “very interested” in coming to Toronto.

“We are working with his office right now to finalize the dates,” Wong-Tam said.

Hosting the Expo 2025 event would bring an expected 40 million global visitors to Toronto, she noted.

“The magnitude of what an Expo can do for this city is tremendous,” Wong-Tam added. “It remains the largest nation-to-nation exhibition.”

But there’s a major roadblock: In 2012, the federal Conservative government cancelled its annual $25,000 membership in the BIE, effectively killing Toronto’s chances of bidding on the 2025 Expo.

Despite the current lack of federal support, Wong-Tam said an Expo-focused working group of business and political leaders - including Wong-Tam, Ryerson University president Sheldon Levy, and director and CEO of the Toronto Arts Council Claire Hopkinson, among others – has kept meeting on-and-off since 2010.

Hopkinson has been coming to the group’s meetings for over a year. She said Toronto has a “natural draw” for tourists, and hosting Expo 2025 would give the city a chance to showcase its arts and creative community.

“I don’t want to position this as opposed to an Olympic Games,” she added. “But I would have to say that one of the positives of an Expo is we haven’t seen the kind of security costs associated with other major, major events.”

A 2013 feasibility study for city council on hosting the 2024 Olympic Games or the 2025 Expo found both the bidding and total costs for the Olympics would be significantly higher than for an Expo.

The two events also have different timelines. The deadline for the city to submit a letter of intent to the International Olympic Committee to bid for the 2024 Games is September 15 this year, with formal bidding in mid-2016 and a winner declared the following summer.

An Expo bid, in contrast, must be submitted by Nov. 1, 2016. The winner would be selected in late-2017.

Regardless of timelines, federal support for an Expo bid is crucial.

Wong-Tam said both NDP leader Thomas Mulcair and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau have made pledges to re-join the BIE should they be elected. “If Prime Minister Harper is elected, we’ll continue trying to work with his office,” she said.

“We think that this Expo in 2025 in Toronto has to survive election cycles and partisan politics,” Wong-Tam said.