TORONTO -- The head of the Canadian Olympic Committee says he would back a bid by Toronto to host the 2024 Olympics, potentially joining a crowded field that already includes five cities.

Marcel Aubut, president of the COC, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation the city can use the Pan Am Games -- which end Sunday -- as a springboard.

Aubut told CBC that he will "absolutely lead and advocate with the whole power of my office that Toronto becomes the host city for the 2024 Games."

So far five cities are bidding: Boston; Budapest, Hungary; Hamburg, Germany; Paris; Rome. Toronto lost recent bids to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympics, and against Beijing for 2008.

Toronto has built several Olympic-grade venues including a pool and cycling velodrome. Canada has spent 2.5 billion Canadian ($2 billion) organizing the Pan Am Games, 10 times what Winnipeg spent 16 years ago, and three times more than Guadalajara, Mexico, for the 2011 edition.

Canada last hosted the Summer Olympics in 1976 in Montreal. Those games ran up debts of $1.5 billion, which took the city 30 years to pay off.

"I think there's only one spot that (Pan Am Games) could lead us, and to me that's the Olympic Games," Aubut said.

Aubut was to meet reporters later Sunday when he could offer more details of what would be a long and complex procedure before a formal decision to bid.

Boston's bid is floundering with local approval falling below 50 per cent. The United States Olympic Committee was to meet Monday to discuss the Boston bid with Los Angeles a possible alternative.

Toronto could suit some interests in North America, which has not hosted a summer games since Atlanta in 1996. From the American perspective Toronto could be considered like "home-country games" with Canadian governments picking up the bills.

Toronto Mayor John Tory told The Associated Press this week the city must move "very quickly" since the International Olympic Committee requires all bidders -- meaning the national Olympic committees -- to declare their intentions by Sept. 15.

The winner will be named in 2017 in Lima, Peru.