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editorial

Toronto mayor John Tory speaks during council meeting on July 9 2015. (Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail)Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail

When the usual people start touting a World's Fair bid like it's a can't-miss investment – Minimal risks! Everlasting rewards! – the polite response is to listen. The smart response is to reject these absurd get-rich-quick promises with the conviction that Canadians shouldn't depend on glorified carnivals as an excuse to build better cities.

Toronto Mayor John Tory prefers to take his patented wait-and-see approach on Toronto's potential Expo 2025 bid, and maybe he's right that there's nothing to lose with a cautious display of semi-indifference. Private interests have been all too willing to pay for a feasibility study, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that the federal government is "prepared to explore the next steps" if Toronto makes a bid. For a city facing long-deferred infrastructure expenditures, there may be no harm in figuring out whether the PM's qualified support can be quantified and turned into hard cash that wouldn't otherwise be made available.

But the cheerleaders for Expo 2025 are so over the top, as they always are when World Class Events are being pitched, that skeptical Canadians should be on high alert. "This is an opportunity of a lifetime," announced former Ontario premier David Peterson, the supremo of the 2015 Pan Am Games event that was Toronto's previous opportunity of a lifetime – and delivered a deluxe airport express train that few people wanted to ride. "Don't be frightened by the money," Mr. Peterson added in his best see-the-big-picture style – the kind of sales pitch that encourages you to reach for your wallet and make sure it's still there.

The cost of hosting Expo 2025 could reach $3-billion. Supporters say a World's Fair is a good excuse for necessary spending, an entertainment spectacle that forces governments to do what they normally don't do well: think big, accelerate their long-term plans and meet a fixed deadline. But if Expo 2025 can't persuasively be staged for its own sake, it shouldn't be staged at all. If you want to invest in the future, skip the distracting mega-event middleman and confront Toronto's real needs head-on.

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