Bring Canada Games to Sudbury to 'be the city we want to be"

The committee aiming to bring the 2021 Canada Summer Games to Sudbury says it should soon have a better idea of how much the event would cost.

Co-chair Darren Stinson told CBC News estimates are being drawn up now for the cost of running the event and the bill for building new sporting venues — including new baseball diamonds, turf soccer fields and tennis facilities — and upgrading existing ones.

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The games would come with $9 million worth of sports infrastructure, a third of which would come from city taxpayers.

Some city councillors are already grumbling about the cost of the games, but Stinson doesn't think it'll be hard to convince them in the end.

"To have the infrastructure that we're going to gain through hosting the events and put ourselves on the map as being a sports tourism destination, I don't think it's going to be a huge hill to climb," said Stinson, who is chairing the committee along with Laurentian University professor and rowing coach Amanda Schweinbenz.

"We need quality of life infrastructure in this city if we're going to continue to grow — if you want to be the city we want to be."

Greater Sudbury is up against Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa and the Niagara Region to land the two-week multi-sport event.

The winning bid will be announced in April.

The city did bid for the 1981 games that ended up going to Thunder Bay and put in a failed joint bid with North Bay for the 2001 competition. 

Stinson said he believes Sudbury's Aboriginal and Francophone communities could be the city's secret weapon this time.

"We're hoping that we can convince the bid committee that we're a far more progressive place to host this. This would be huge for the community."

"[In] Ottawa? [it] would just be another event," he said.

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Stinson, who previously chaired the Greater Sudbury Economic Development Corporation and the committee which developed plans for a multi-pad arena "legacy project" in 2009, said the bid committee is hoping that Sudburians will express their support for the games by clicking on greatersudbury2021.ca.