Bid and preparations
The Canadian Olympic Association chose Vancouver as the Canadian candidate city over Calgary, which sought to re-host the games and Quebec City, which had lost the 2002 Olympic bid in 1995. On the first round of voting on November 21, 1998, Vancouver-Whistler had 26 votes, Quebec City with 25 and Calgary 21. On December 3, 1998, the second and final round of voting occurred between the two leading contenders, which saw Vancouver win with 40 votes compared to Quebec City's 32. The win allowed Vancouver to prepare its bid and begin lobbying efforts internationally.
After the bid bribing scandal that took place with the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City (which saw Quebec City asking for compensation (C$8 million) for their failed 2002 bid), 1999 saw many of the rules around the bidding process change. The IOC created the Evaluation Commission which was appointed on October 24, 2002. Prior to the bidding for the 2008 Summer Olympics, often host cities would fly members of the IOC to their city where they toured the city and were provided with gifts from the city. The lack of oversight and transparency often led to allegations of money for votes.
Afterward, changes brought forth by the IOC bidding rules were tightened, and more focused on technical aspects of candidate cities. The team analysed the candidate city features and provided its input back to the IOC. The bid books from the three candidate cities were submitted in January 2003 and inspections occurred before May 2003, when the final report was submitted.
Vancouver won the bidding process to host the Olympics by a vote of the International Olympic Committee on July 2, 2003, at the 115th IOC Session held in Prague, Czech Republic. The result was announced by IOC President Jacques Rogge. Vancouver faced two other finalists shortlisted that same February: PyeongChang, South Korea, and Salzburg, Austria. Pyeongchang had the most votes of the three cities in the first round of voting, in which Salzburg was eliminated. In the run-off, all but two of the members who had voted for Salzburg voted for Vancouver. It was the closest vote by the IOC since Sydney, Australia beat Beijing for the 2000 Summer Olympics by 2 votes. Vancouver's victory came almost 2 years after Toronto's 2008 Summer Olympic bid was defeated by Beijing in a landslide vote.