The bill for the Olympic games, over and above the revenue the games are expected to generate (so long as there is no great threat to air travel during those two weeks), is now estimated by the BC auditor general to be $2.6 billion, even while most of the venues for the sporting carnival are still 40 months from completion. A lot of the work, like two new hockey arenas in East Vancouver, haven’t even broken ground yet.

No reasonable observer could have any doubt the bill will grow substantially larger yet. The question of the cost of security, for example, remains wholly unaddressed, as the auditor general, with some alarm, pointed out. The recent games in Greece allegedly ran up a bill of $2 billion for security.

The Vancouver 2010 Games will come six years later, in a country that will only be much deeper than it already is into war in Islamic lands, and one that is next door to the country Canada is now on record heavily supporting, which by then will surely have made some kind of move on Iran with results no one is willing to wager on. While the federal government may foot the whole increased security bill, it is nonetheless a taxpayer-supported cost of staging the Olympics—one that may make the Greek $2 billion security bill look like a helluva bargain.

The biggest cost overruns so far are occurring in venue construction and new transportation infrastructure to those venues, and the biggest component of cost overruns in venue construction is the rising cost of labour. That pressure won’t ease, but will only worsen as more projects are begun. Imported foreign labour does little to bring those costs down; they only help construction companies meet crucial timelines in an environment of labour shortages.

There is surely an upper limit on how much taxpayers are willing to pay to continue forward with plans to stage the Olympic games. If the forecasts for the total bill were to approach, say, $20 billion, to pull a number out of a hat, few would argue with the idea of pulling the plug on the whole affair to cut our losses. Few are calling for a plug-pulling today, so the line is somewhere between $2 billion and $20 billion.

We are not yet over the line, but we very well may be in the near future, long before the games come to town. If venue and infrastructure construction climb only another 20% and security is only 20% more than the Greek security bill (adjusting for inflation), the bill would top $6 billion. The line for pulling the plug is not after we spend more than we are willing to pay, but when we anticipate all current and future costs going too high, and that’s when it becomes more prudent to pull the plug early and avoid incurring any more of those future costs. If we anticipate costs eventually going over the line, and maybe $6 billion is over that line, then the sooner we pull the plug, the more we limit the losses we are going to be liable for.

Fortunately, there is a compromise between taking on unacceptable losses, and canceling the games now. It’s known as the “Olympic legacy,” only it’s not ours in the future, but rather Calgary’s from the past.

Calgary staged the 1988 Winter Olympic games. Ever since, it has touted the national value of the game’s legacies—the venues and roads that have remained after the games finished. What better use of that legacy could there be than to re-use them as venues for the 2010 Winter Olympics?

Consider this fact: Even with a new highway from downtown Vancouver to Whistler, the trip will still take two hours in good weather and with no traffic. By contrast, Vancouver airport to Calgary by air is a half-hour hop. Perform airport security downtown prior to the boarding of buses or skytrains, and hand over South Terminal for exclusive use for two weeks, and suddenly those Calgary winter Olympic venues are closer than those in Whistler. Done efficiently, Calgary venues would be almost as convenient as even some Vancouver-based venues like the planned East Side practice ice rinks.

It is admittedly a strange idea. But the alternatives are either to cancel the games altogether, costing us enormous penalties and lawsuits, not to mention wasted funds already spent, or to grimly push on without regard for how much it will ultimately cost us, which could be in the several billions. Surely subsidizing several daily charter flights to Calgary, though expensive, would come nowhere near the billions being spent on venue and infrastructure construction here.

Using Calgary venues makes use of already existing national legacies, fulfils our obligations to the Olympics, and saves us a huge fortune in building costs for new venues. Just let the idea bounce around your head for a day or so. It’ll start making sense.