Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer nailed it. See Olympic costs report roasts B.C. Liberals, his column for September 15.

You can read the actual report here. It's a PDF, and 72 pages, but for a report of this nature, it's pretty readable.

One aspect that needs a lot more attention is the security cost. The estimate in the Vancouver bid was $175 million. The Auditor General's comment is very cautious; he just said that this amount was "not updated".

That $175 million figure may turn out to be off by an order of magnitude. The cost for the 2002 games in Salt Lake City was $310 million, and you can work upward from that. The US has the option of refusing to send their team if they are not satisfied with the security arrangements, so the Vancouver Organizing Committee, the provincial government, and the federal government aren't really capable of saying, "This is absolutely all that we are going to spend."