Politics

Overall, things are going well for facilities for the 2010 Olympics. There's ski jumping and cross-country skiing at the Callaghan Nordic Centre in Squamish. They just had the Canadian Luge Championships at the Whistler Sliding Centre, and the Canadian Bobsled Championships are happening there March 21-22. The University of British Columbia ice hockey team has completed their first season in their new arena. The World Single Distances Speed Skating Championships is happening at the Richmond Olympic Oval, and there will be public skating there starting June 1. The new Skytrain line to the airport and Richmond isn't open yet, but they've been running test trains along the route since December.

The outstanding headaches for the Olympic organizers are still security costs (latest estimate: $900 million) and construction of the Olympic Village. Yes, the village will be completed on time, but it took an act of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly and a $450 million loan from the City of Vancouver to keep it on track.

My humble suggestion is, if you live in a city that is working on a future Olympic bid, give strong consideration to billeting athletes and coaches, or put up portable housing on an empty piece of land.

The Real Political Lessons From Vancouver's Leakgate, Election

I'm getting more than a little tired of being told by the likes of his Highness Larry Campbell (or is it Sir Larry?) and, today, columnist Milo Cernetig in the Vancouver Sun's lead post-election story, just how awful the recent leaking of secret loan documents was and how the leakers should be hunted down and "hung out to dry." I'm not debating the legality of stealing government documents. What I do question is that they had to be stolen and leaked to the media just for the public to be aware of an important civic detail, like the fact I'm on the hook for $100 million loan to prop up a private development that will have a very brief use as the Olympic Athletes' Village. If the business fundamentals of the development make sense, then the market can finance it, credit crunch or not. Any takers? No? Okay, but I'm supposed to feel secure about lending Millennium Developments my money, even though not one bank would go near the deal? And my political representatives don't even have to ask me for it? They just take it and give it away? Yesterday, when I voted, I had three ballot measures before me (each in the region of $50 -100 million) for civic improvements to our parks, libraries and infrastructure. I was asked for the money, and I said, "okay." Now, see how that works?

I won't deny the leak was a masterstroke of dirty politics. Whoever procured and leaked the documents really screwed Peter Ladner, and I get that - I'm not defending the actions taken by Vancouver's own "deepthroat" as legal or entirely ethical (by the way, it was illegal for Mark Felt, the original deepthroat, as Deputy Director of the FBI, to leak sensitive information to the Washington Post in what became Watergate; years later he's viewed as a hero, not a criminal, because the information he brought to light was of vital public interest). Milo Cernetig says Vancouver's leakgate has made us a "national laughingstock." Au contraire - the thing that has made us a national laughingstock is an Olympic Games that has seen a few wealthy developers get even wealthier, in a virtually risk-free environment, while budgets spiral out of control, homelessness escalates to unfathomable levels (not unrelated to the Olympics in the least), the environment suffers incredibly, and the cost burden falls on the backs of taxpayers - often without our knowledge. Mr. Cernetig has completely missed the point. The leaked documents and deal are the embarrassment, not the leaking of these. The reason this story caught fire is because it struck a nerve with the people of this city who are already disgusted with - and embarrassed by - the Olympics and the financial and political corruption that surrounds them.

What's happened so far is, Vancouver City Council voted, in camera, for a loan guarantee to the Millennium Development Corp., the company building the Olympic Village. The motion to approve this was passed unanimously, which means that one of the people who voted for it was Peter Ladner, who is a candidate for Mayor, The election is on Saturday, Nov. 15.

Here's a couple of articles by people following this story. David Berner: Vancouver council owes misled taxpayers answers
Frances Bula, Globe and Mail: Vancouver fund's cash reserves 'tapped out'
Monte Paulsen, The Tyee: City lacked authority to hold Olympic loan meeting in secret: Pivot

An announcement was made by federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day on July 23 that "It's going to be more than $175 million, clearly, and the exact numbers will be out pretty soon. We're just going over some fine details."

If Day's objective is to inspire confidence, he's doing a poor job. Nobody with any brains believed that the $175 million figure had any relation to reality. Now, Day says that there will be "exact numbers". Uh, this is a budget we're talking about. Do you have "exact numbers" for what you're going to spend on groceries next month? Of course not.

More realistic estimates of "close to $1 billion" were made years ago. Story from the Ottawa Citizen: Vancouver 2010 Olympic security will be over budget.

VANOC has stopped making minutes of their meetings available to the public. Here's an editorial from the Asian Pacific Post: Secrecy and the 2010 Olympics. Excerpt: "the increasing secrecy surrounding the 2010 games is creating a credibility gap between VANOC and its supporters, let alone its detractors."

This site is, of course, about the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver (and Squamish and Whistler), not about the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. However, the 2008 Olympics are happening sooner. The issues of human rights around the Olympic Games has been around since at least 1936, and they aren't going away anytime soon.

A couple of stories have appeared recently in the Epoch Times about Kai Chen, who played for China's national basketball team. The stories are Olympic Freedom T-shirt Movement Launched and Olympic Freedom T-shirt Movement Launched—Part II, both by Linda Slupski. The Epoch Times has a history of publishing news about China that the mainstream media won't touch due to “bad for business” reasons.

Kai Chen has published a book, One In A Billion: Journey Toward Freedom, which tells his story of China's corrupt government, and the sports apparatus that is part and parcel of it. To draw more public attention to his cause, Chen has started the Olympic Freedom T-shirt Movement.

The movement has begun with a web site, http://olympicsfreedomtshirt.blogspot.com/. The first event will be a five mile run in Los Angeles on August 5. The t-shirts should be available on or after that date. An update will be posted here when they are available, or keep checking Chen's blogspot site.

The front page of the Vancouver Province today features a big screaming headline that says anti-Olympics protesters are going to picket the homes of Olympic officials, in an effort to drive them out of their homes - just like, they say, the Olympics are doing to low income people in this city.

I went to see this film with no idea of what to expect, and it was only a coincidence that I went the day after Betty Krawczyk, a 78-year-old opponent of the Eagleridge Bluffs highway project, was sentenced to ten months in jail.

Krawczyk gets a lot of coverage in this film, as does Harriet Nahanee, a 71-year-old who died of pneumonia a month after serving a 14 day sentence for the same protest activity.

It would be a mistake to think that this film is about septuagenarians who stand in front of bulldozers, however. Burnaby Mayor (and former Chair of B.C. Transit) Derek Corrigan gets a lot of time in front of the camera, and my opinion of him has gone up as a result of seeing this film. There are also interviews with several other Vancouver-area mayors, including Pamela Goldsmith-Jones of West Vancouver, one of the most affluent municipalities in North America. Another person with a lot to say in this film is Sara MacIntyre of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an organization that normally takes the “what's good for business is good for business” attitude. Other interviewees include Chris Shaw, a fairly level-headed and long-term opponent of the 2010 Games, and lawyer David Eby of the Pivot Legal Society, who I interviewed for a recent article on this site, Another promise broken.

Last week's news was another Olympic unveiling ceremony (a clock to count the time until the opening in 2010) accompanied by a not-very-polite protest by Vancouver's anti-poverty community.

These protests aren't going away, and there are good reasons why. During the same week, there was also a story in the local media about the Golden Crown Hotel in the 100 block of West Hastings Street. I'm familiar with this establishment. Not as a guest or a resident; when I moved to Vancouver 25 years ago, there was a very good Chinese restaurant on the premises. That restaurant is long gone. Like many old Vancouver hotels, it is occupied by long-term, low-income tenants. The owner, Daniel Jun (a.ka. #627017 BC Ltd.), has issued eviction notices to these tenants, effective the end of March. His plan is to renovate the place, then rent the rooms out, at somewhat higher rates, to construction workers that are coming to town for Olympics-related work.

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".