Whitehorse Mayor Laura Cabott says she has received notification that the Canada Games Council is moving on from the Whitehorse bid.

In an interview with the Star this morning Cabott said “The Canada Games Council advised the two hosts, us and YG, that they needed to hear from us as of Monday (Dec. 5). What they needed was a resolution from the territorial government that they were going to support the Games, that they were going to host the Games and then a co-written letter from both of us. So again, City of Whitehorse has done everything. We’ve identified how much we’re going to pay. YG has never done that. We passed a Council resolution saying we’re in. YG hasn’t done that.

“So what’s happened is that date has now passed. And we were notified by the Canada Games Council as of yesterday that the Games – that they’re moving on.

“There will be no games here in 2027. And it will be two or three decades before we’ll get a chance to ever host the games again because it goes on a rotational basis. And the next time that we’re up for an opportunity to bid – the rules change. We’re going to have to bid with the other smaller jurisdictions. So Newfoundland, P.E.I., Nova Scotia – as opposed to in the rotation right now, we would have had to bid with the other two territories and so we’re out for a very, very long time.”

When it was mentioned that Yukon government Minister of Community Services Richard Mostyn had said in an interview with the Star Monday that the city and YG had until the end of the week to respond to the Canada Games Council as to what their plans were, Cabott said “Canada Games Council was very clear on this. They’ve given extensions a few times now. On December 5, we needed to provide them – it’s in their correspondence to us.”

Cabott then read the notification from the Canada Games Council to the City of Whitehorse.

“In terms of clarifying approaches, the Canada Games Council would request the following by Dec. 5: One: a letter from the two host governments confirming their acceptance of the conditions and Two: a territorial resolution from the Yukon government including all required elements in Schedule A.”

Cabott then said “That didn’t happen. The city received a letter from Yukon saying they would host it but no legacy piece to us, not even the upgrades.

“Again, we responded saying ‘Look, we’re – all along, we’ve had discussions, we’ve been open to alternatives. We have never said that we don’t want to host the Games. We have never called this off. We have facilitated meetings with the feds, with CYFN, with the Bid Committee, we facilitated those meetings in the last couple of weeks to see if we can get this thing happening.’

“But after we received a letter from government on Dec. 5 saying basically ‘Will you host without a municipal legacy piece’, we basically responded back and said it was very frustrating and unfortunately it doesn’t appear that we’re aligned in pursuit of the Games … and we’ve said that it’s always an option for the Yukon government to host on their own so we’ve said if you don’t like what we need to host this, to be an official partner, then you can host it and that we would certainly support them in some way. But without that key legacy infrastructure for our citizens, it just wouldn’t be a responsible decision of taxpayers dollars.”

In an interview Monday with the Star, Minister of Community Services Richard Mostyn revealed that the Canada Games Council relaxed their conditions for hosting the Games about two weeks ago.

Since then, the city and YG had been having discussions about how to proceed, including putting forth a scaled-down bid.

Mostyn was asked why Option 4 in the 2027 Canada Winter Games Arena Assessment – the most extravagant one, was the recommended option in the assessment.

“I think it was cheaper to run in the long term … as soon as you open up a building to construction you have to deal with all the existing problems. Possible asbestos, all that stuff has to be remediated … I think the difference in cost between the two proposals, say, was about $6 million … and you wind up with a brand new facility built to modern standards meeting modern environmental codes, a much more efficient building. And the difference in price wasn’t that much … as well the O and M (Operations and Maintenance) was a lot cheaper going forward. So it pays for itself certainly over a 40 -year life lifespan. It certainly is cheaper to run and you end up with a building that lasts a lot longer. City of Whitehorse, as a co-host and partner, wanted a legacy asset and we worked hard. We collaborated and explored all options, including building a standalone arena. None of the options, with the exception of the selected option, met the needs of the City. We just didn’t proceed with them … Option 4 was the one that best met the needs of the city as it identified. The City of Whitehorse … has to meet the needs of its citizens as well. And this is what they said met the needs of their citizens.”

Mostyn said they didn’t consider Option 1, which involved expanding the Takhini Arena and adding a second sheet of ice.

“(The) design team wasn’t even given the instructions to revisit Option 1 at all. Option one was rejected by the City of Whitehorse … it wouldn’t maximize use of the site … You then have to have duplicate infrastructure. To run both arenas in terms of staff, Zambonis, all this stuff would have to be duplicated. It just wasn’t a good use of resources.

And then the second site, to have a second arena built at that site.

“So we chose option four. Which considered a lot of factors including legacy requirements for the City of Whitehorse using the ice surface’s seating during the opening and closing ceremony, so … we could have actually accommodated many more than 2,800 people in that facility if we used the ice surface’s seating space as well. So if you’re using it as a performance space, you can actually get a lot more people into the facility.

“And the age and orientation of the existing arena. Takhini Arena was built in ‘84. It’s an old building anyway. When you open up the envelope of that building, you have to bring up the modern building code standards. There’s a certain cost implicit in that anyway and it’s not sited on the land very well. So if we tore it down and rebuilt you could actually maximize use of the land a lot better than you could if we just had a second arena plunked in that area.”

As mentioned, the Canada Games Council informed the potential partners that conditions were being relaxed. “I believe it was about two weeks ago,” recalled Mostyn. “We got a letter. So it was fairly recent that we got written notification of this.”

Mostyn was asked if it was his intention to push the issue to try to get the bid moving forward again.

“Was I intending personally to push this to a new stage? No, I was making a responsible decision based on the bid that we had pulled together over 18 months together in partnership with the Canada Games Council, meeting their requirements and meeting the requirements that the City of Whitehorse needed for their citizens,” he replied.

YG and the City reopened discussions after the CGC relaxed their conditions.

“That’s right,” confirmed Mostyn. “It also changes the whole calculus but you know … this is difficult … we’re involving a lot of players in this decision-making. And it’s all good and we have a good working relationship but with the new conditions, of course we’re going to talk about that and see what it is. Because the ground has shifted a bit. But, in the end, the City of Whitehorse does need legacy infrastructure for its citizens and to date we have not gotten a firm financial commitment from Ottawa for any recreational infrastructure in the city.

“You talk about doing anything to Takhini Arena. I have no idea what that costs. I don’t know what that looks like. And it took us 18 months to get the bid in last time. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re looking at this thing and trying to figure out whether or not we host a scaled-back version of the Games with no infrastructure.”

Mostyn didn’t directly answer the question of whether it’s possible to have a legacy piece with a scaled-down bid, only saying “Well, we’re working on that now.”

It was pretty well the same when he was asked if there’s any chance of a scaled-down bid being resurrected.

“We’ve just got this new information and of course we’re discussing this with our co-hosts.”

As for his personal feeling of the potential for a successful bid to come out of this new process, Mostyn responded “It’s not about my own personal opinion on this. We’re working with our partners with all the information and skill that we can bring to this to see what’s possible and we’ll make a decision with our partners.”

He was willing to advise what the timeline for the latest talks is.

“I don’t have a firm timeline at this stage. I think the time’s a-wasting. We really have to come up with a decision because the Canada Games Council deserves a decision and so we’re working on this as quickly as we can to find out if anything’s possible.

“At the moment the Canada Games Council wants to know whether we’re proceeding on this this week. So the timeline is looming. So we’re working to that timeline. We’ll see what happens.”

Mostyn added “It’s a big commitment for the City of Whitehorse. It’s a small jurisdiction, one of the smallest sporting jurisdictions in the country and hosting a national event like this is a very big commitment for both the City of Whitehorse and the Yukon government and given the state of the world right now, it has complicated this bid enormously for both co-hosts and the federal government too. None of the decisions we’ve taken so far have been easy and I don’t think the hard decisions are over yet.”

Mostyn asserted that their decision will be revealed soon.

“Once a decision is made, we will certainly communicate. We don’t make decisions in secrecy here. This is not something we won’t communicate once a decision is made.”

It now appears that a decision has been made for them, and the 2027 Canada Winter Games bid is now officially dead in the water.