The City of Whitehorse and the Yukon government, along with the Canada Games Council, formally announced they are jointly bidding for the 2027 Canada Winter Games.

The event took place late Wednesday morning in the Grey Mountain Room at the Mount McIntyre Recreation Centre.

The Games are the largest amateur multi-sport event in Canada. Whitehorse previously hosted the 2007 event.

The announcement was the start of a 13-month process to win the bid to host the Games.

The launch was hosted by Myles Dolphin, the city’s manager of strategic communications, who remarked, “Mother Nature said, ‘so you want to make a Canada Winter Games announcement today? I can help with that,’” referring to the snowy day outside.

Several dignitaries attended the event, including some members of city council, with most delivering speeches.

Premier Sandy Silver spoke first, stating that the Yukon is “ready to go” to host the Games again. Silver added the games could generate $100 million for the economy.

Kwanlin Dün First Nation Councillor Jesse Dawson followed, saying that youth needed something positive like this event in the community.

Peter Johnston, the grand chief of the Council of Yukon First Nations, echoed Dawson’s comment.

Mayor Dan Curtis was up next, stating that the 2007 Games contributed an estimated $75.2 million to the territory’s gross domestic product, and generated $176.7 million in economic activity. He added that 10 percent of the population uses the Canada Games Centre (CGC) on a daily basis.

Community Services Minister Richard Mostyn commented that the 2007 games left a legacy that includes the CGC and a $1 million legacy fund used to support and promote Indigenous people’s participation in sport in the Yukon.

Following Mostyn’s speech was a video from Sport Yukon showing what the territory has to offer.

The speeches resumed with Anthony Everett, the 2027 Bid Evaluation Committee chair, relating how Piers McDonald, the 2027 Canada Winter Games Bid Committee chair, was a mentor on his Canada Games journey.

Everett also mentioned that one million young people in Canada will be competing just to appear at the Games in 2027. Everett also expressed his confidence in the Whitehorse bid.

McDonald followed Everett, stating that the organizing of any Games is a “team sport.”

McDonald related some history of the 2007 Games, saying they “turned out to be an event that many athletes, parents, coaches across the country would remember fondly.”

He added that the Games “remind us of our better selves.”

The final speaker was David Greer, a former cross country skier who won gold in the men’s 10km race at the 2007 Canada Winter Games. He was the only athlete from Team Yukon to win gold during those Games.

Greer mentioned the benefits of training and competing in the Games, adding that they expose a future generation of athletes to high-level sporting events.

A video featuring the Canada Games followed.

McDonald spoke to the Star afterward about the 2027 bid. When asked about the bid process, he replied “the process has started. We’ve got a small committee underway. The bid committee will probably be 40, 50 people by the time it’s up and running … we have until late next spring to essentially go through all the sports, do a full analysis of all the facilities in Whitehorse, and ensure that we understand very clearly what needs to be done with each facility to marry that up with the standards for each sport.

“The biggest facility issue we have is the athletes’ village i. e. we don’t have one. So we have to find a way to build one – not just for two weeks, but we have to make sure the legacy will last for decades afterward.”

“You need to have a large cafeteria area which can hold 800 people who sit down, which is bigger than anything we’ve got. We also have to have a commercial kitchen, we have to have team offices, etc. So there’s a lot to it.

“The second biggest issue we have is that we’re short one arena. In 2007, we had four, we needed really five, but we made do with four, and when the games were over, the city tore down the Stan McCowan rink, and left us with three, these two (at CGC) and Takhini (arena). So we need to have a fourth rink.”

McDonald says upgrading the facilities for the 2027 games will be necessary.

“Certainly in terms of the athletes housing, something will have to be built … and I suspect we will have to have another arena. I think that’s inevitable.”

McDonald agreed that a new arena would be an excellent legacy for the 2027 games.

“I think it would be a fantastic legacy. It would be an amazing thing.”

McDonald explains the next steps

“We put together a bid proposal and then we make sure the proposal is satisfactory to the two hosts – the government and the city – and then they file that with the Canada Games Council – I think that’s July. And then the council – they have a site visit … they have a technical committee that comes up and does a full review of all the facilities. They take it back to the Canada Games Council, and they decide … by November.

The bid will be assessed in two phases. A technical review will take place in February 2022, followed by a comprehensive review in October 2022. The Games will be awarded in November 2022. Once that happens, the bid committee would “morph” into the host society, which will have up to 600 planning volunteers, who will recruit about 5000 volunteers, and end up with 100 staff members.

But what are the chances of getting the games?

“Very high,” said McDonald. “But there are some big challenges. We have fundraising challenges. We have to get sponsorship. The target for sponsorship is about $11 million. So it’s a much larger project than the Arctic Winter Games … It’s doable. We’ve done if before. But it is daunting. It’s one of the more challenging tasks.”

“I’m confident that we can find ways of making ourselves attractive to national sponsors.”

There are no competing bids at this time. However, McDonald used the example of Brandon in 2015 in which that Manitoba city had to give up the games to Winnipeg because of a lack of facilities. So there’s no guarantee that a sole bid will be successful. Having said that, according to McDonald, the odds of that happening are slim.

“Theoretically, somebody else in the Yukon could get it. But the reality is that nobody else has got even close to the facilities that Whitehorse has. So Whitehorse is really the only option.”

As for the other territories, the Northwest Territories decided not to put in a bid due to a potential lack of support, and Nunavut’s lack of facilities took it out of the picture.

The capitol budget for facility upgrades is $9 million, which would be split between the federal and territorial governments and the city of Whitehorse.

McDonald said a lot of that money would go into Mount Sima, which he says needs a lot of work. Every facility needs work, including painting.

The operating budget for the games is between $31 and $32 million.

That would be split between the federal government, the Yukon government, and the host society, which would have to come up with the $11 million from sponsors.

“I think we should come together with a plan that can deliver the games within those financial parameters. But we’ve got a lot of thinking to do as to how we’re going to do this. The whole process of the bid is to develop a realistic plan that proves that you can deliver the games.

“We’ve got some hurdles to overcome, internally, to reassure ourselves that we can do that. So we can’t just tell the Canada Games committee ‘oh, yeah, we’ll take care of the arena.’ You have to prove it. You have to have agreements signed saying you can actually do it. You have to have a sponsorship plan that is actually realistic. You can’t just say we’re going to tap the local community for $11 million, because that’s just not realistic. Typically a sponsorship for the Arctic Winter Games is about $2 million, and that’s a workout for this community to do that. Businesses are getting really tapped hard. So I’m not expecting that the Canada Games can do more than $2 million.

“We did $2.8 (million) in 2007, but by that time we were already feeling tension in the community, because we were sucking up all the sponsorship money. People who needed sponsors for … literacy programs or other things, they were finding out that we had already been there and already taken all the sponsorship money that that company had available. So they started to complain and we backed off at that point and said ‘okay, let’s not try to do more’, because it would be too destructive locally. And we went national, which we’re gonna have to do this time.”