GLASGOW'S bid to win the Commonwealth Games in 2014 has been handed a massive boost by its main rival, whose campaign is on the brink of imploding.
Organisational faults and political squabbles have surfaced in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with city councillors saying they will not support a final bid if the cost rises well above the original $785million budget, as is expected. With the other contender
, Abuja in Nigeria, conceding that Glasgow is ahead in the race, Scotland's biggest city now appears to be warm favourite to win the 2014 Games.
The public rows over Halifax's bid caused the Premier of Nova Scotia province, Rodney MacDonald, to warn the warring factions to keep quiet or risk damaging the bid.
"These types of discussions are better behind closed doors," said MacDonald. "We have to make sure through this whole process, that we don't hurt the bid process by being out there with too much talking about it, talking about numbers that may or may not be accurate."
MacDonald was speaking after councillors openly speculated that the Halifax bidding process - itself costed at $14.3m - would be cancelled if the final projected cost of the Games rises to more than $1.3 billion, as has been widely reported in Canada.
But Premier MacDonald himself sparked a row when he was reported as saying: "I'm not willing to break the bank to host [the Games]," and both he and Halifax's Mayor Peter Kelly called on the Canadian federal government to increase their promised contribution of $400m.
That prompted Canada's federal secretary of state for sport, Helena Guergis, to issue a stinging reply: "To be all of a sudden asked to be increasing that amount when the province and the city haven't put their financial contribution on the table is rather strange."
Glasgow, Halifax and Abuja must file their final bid documents with the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) by May 9, with the final decision being taken by the CGF in November. Last month, a senior official in the Abuja bid said Glasgow was ahead after the Nigerian city experienced serious problems - including an outbreak of illness - at the recent All-African games in the city.
By CGF rules, neither Glasgow or Abuja can comment on Halifax's problems, but Glasgow's organisers are quietly jubilant at the highly-public political rows in Canada - unanimity of political backing is now seen as a pre-requisite for any major events bid.
The Halifax bid, meanwhile, has also hit a major organisational snag. It was recently discovered that there is not enough suitable land for the stadium and athletes' village planned for Shannon Park in the Dartmouth area of the city, and Halifax Regional Municipality is carrying out a frantic search for more land in the vicinity.
The municipality and the federal and regional governments also ordered independent consultants to review the costs of the bid after a proposed budget was passed to them in secret early last month. As a result, a meeting of Halifax councillors to decide on their support for the final bid has been put back to March 20.
Public support for the bid has declined from 79% to 72% according to a recent opinion poll, while the Halifax Bid Committee's failure to finalise costs has lost it the unanimous political support it previously enjoyed in the city.
"More than likely, barring unforeseen circumstances, the bid is dead," Councillor Andrew Younger told the Halifax Daily News, itself ironically one of the founding partners of the bid.
"What I'm hearing is there are a lot of people on council that are fed up with the bid committee and their attitude towards the council."
Halifax's main problem has always been the lack of a suitable outdoor stadium. Sources in Canada say a lot of the problems have arisen because of "politicking" over the facilities, with the city and provincial leaders trying to get the federal government to pay more for these developments.
Premier MacDonald said the Canadian Government had invested in larger cities such as Vancouver and Calgary, and Halifax should be "treated on an equal footing". But, according to one source in Nova Scotia, the fear is that the city, province and country will end up with "a Montreal-type situation", a reference to the 1976 Olympic Games which lost $2b - the final payment on the city's Olympic debt was only paid last year.
Deborah Hashey, director of communications for Halifax 2014, said the various negative comments "in no way" reflected the commitment of the three levels of government, but were part of "a negotiating process" between the three funding partners.
"It could have been done earlier, but we came to the whole process later than Glasgow and Abuja because of the competition between Canadian cities to make the bid," said Hashey.
Glasgow's bid, meanwhile, will be the centrepiece of the first-ever National Events Conference which will take place in the city's Royal Concert Hall on Tuesday. In a keynote speech, Glasgow's bid director Derek Casey will tell 300 delegates of the progress made to date.
EventScotland chief executive David Williams, who leaves his post on March 30 to return home to Australia for family reasons, praised the Glasgow bid team yesterday.
"I am very optimistic that we will win it," said Williams. "Glasgow is already doing a fantastic job in regenerating the city, and the developments at Kelvingrove Art Galleries and the SECC area are world class. Put the games on top of this and the city will have the confidence to do what Brisbane did in 1982, when the Commonwealth Games were the catalyst for it becoming the fastest-growing city in the country."
