Compiled by Rashaad Bhamjee, Daniel Bitonti & Mike Treadgold, Graphic by Duncan Day-Myron.
I think that the biggest issue is the appropriation of public money, tax money, to take care of any deficit that the Olympic games may encounter… There’s going to be a lot of public money tax money, federal, provincial, and municipal spent on the games. For instance: security. That’s almost a one billion dollar budget item. That’s public money from the Feds. So a lot of people think, ‘gee wiz, if we’re going to spend tax money, why are we going to spend them on the Olympic games? If the organizing committee is going to put on the games, why not let them pay for it? Why do public monies have to be put in, particularly when public moneys would go, should go, to the betterment of lives of the citizenry, especially in the Vancouver area.’ So they [critics of the Olympics] are looking to the disenfranchised, the poor and the homeless. And there’s legitimacy to these arguments because if you’re spending public money for infrastructure that will benefit the larger mass of the population, then that’s fine. What is that? Well, that’s spending public money on transportation, communication, environment, security measures, and stuff like that. That all benefits the public. But when you spend it on grandiose sports facilities that have little or no chance of recuperating the operational and maintenance costs of the games, that doesn’t go down so well. The hard realities come home after the games in terms of the expense of it all. Now some of them [facilities] have some public appeal like a skating rink for instance, like a swimming pool for instance. What public appeal does a luge run have or a ski jump have?…
But if you put these games before three quarters of the world’s population on television, this is going to be good for Vancouver. It may be good for Vancouver in terms of exploiting it to reap greater economic business. They’re good in that way. They’re a great celebration…
I think one of the best examples of a domestic corporate program was Salt Lake City. Forty-three per cent of the revenue that the Salt Lake City organizing committee raised to support their games came from their domestic sponsorship program…from their own domestic raising of money and raising of goods in kind for instance. I think Vancouver is probably going to come close to that, if not exceed it.
Every dollar they can raise from their own resources will, in effect, lessen what the citizens have to pick up in way of a deficit afterwards.
Dr. Robert Barney, founding director for the International Centre For Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario.
According to the Olympic Resistance Network: “The 2010 Winter Olympics will take place on unceded Indigenous land. Far from being simply about sport, the history of the Olympics is one rooted in displacement, corporate greed, repression, and violence. The effects of the upcoming Winter Games are apparent to everyone – expansion of sport tourism on Indigenous lands; increasing homelessness across the province and especially in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside; misdirected public spending and debt; vulnerable working conditions especially for migrant labour; unprecedented destruction of the environment; and unparalleled police and security spending.”
“Sports and physical health are a positive aspect of any society. The Olympic industry, however, uses sports and athletes as commodities to market corporate products,” said Gord Hill, a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation and editor of no2010.com. “Governments use Olympic Games to attract corporate investment. Despite claims that Olympics are not political, they are deeply political with devastating social and ecological impacts that cannot simply be ignored.”
“Because we have no treaty with Canada, the imposition and encroachment of Whistler – their hydro lines, their highways, their railroad, in fact all infrastructure development for the 2010 Games – in our territory is illegal,” says James Louie from the St’at’imc nation, Whistler
“Simplistically classifying Olympic resistance and disruptions as violent is a scare tactic. We will do whatever we can to disrupt the 2010 Olympic Winter Games because disruption has proved extremely successful,” says Anna Hunter from the Anti Poverty Committee. “The rich should not just be allowed to carry on with their violent business–as-usual as poor people continue to suffer.”
The Olympic Resistance Network is based in Vancouver as the lead organization protesting the Olympic Games. The ORN exists as a space to coordinate all anti-2010 Olympics efforts.
The original intentions of the games from 100 years ago have long gone by the wayside and quite simply, it’s not about sports anymore. It’s about real estate developers in every bid city and every host city trying to get their pet projects funded by the public. It’s socialized welfare for corporations.
The public has fallen for these tactics and they do, time and time again. And every time after, some of them say, ‘well, we had a great party,’ but then the financial hangover comes and you end up paying it off for the next 30 years. And that tends to be the typical outcome.
What could you do instead with more than $6 billion? Well, I’m a neurological disease researcher and if someone told me to put together a team of 100 people to go cure Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and ALS, probably the diseases that are going to kill more people than cancer in the next years, it could be done with that kind of money. Assuming that the Olympics costs $6 billion, we’ll have spent more on this 17-day party than we do in ten years of medical research in this country.
Think about poverty. The Games were supposed to benefit impoverished areas of town and they simply haven’t done it. We went from something like 400 or 500 people on the streets in 2002 to over 3000 today. There has been an absolute failure to adjust poverty and arguably, it’s been made worse, not only in terms of homelessness, but also real poverty overall. Completely neglected.
We now have only one thing left to do and that’s to meet them in the streets. We won’t accept it and we’re going to raise our voices and exercise the civil liberties that we have left. And if the authorities don’t like that, they can do what they think they need to do, but the eyes of the world are on them. If there’s a legacy of these games, it’ll be the revitalized anti-globalization movement.
This has the potential to be a watershed games. It hasn’t all come to fruition until now. The protesting at this level is a first. You haven’t seen different social justice groups linking up like this before. You haven’t seen alternative media so intent on getting their stories out, regardless of the channel. This is all on the radar for the first time. It’s going to be a very unique Olympic Games. People will not look back at Vancouver 2010 and see it as same old, same old.
Dr. Chris Shaw is a neuroscientist at UBC and one of the foremost critics of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. He is the author of “Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games” and a spokesperson for 2010watch.
I lived for lacrosse, eventually playing at high level [and] was fortunate to be offered scholarships to several U.S. universities.
And, was on the verge of packing my bags to head stateside, when the late Chief Joe Mathias, one of Canada’s leading Aboriginal thinkers and he challenged me directly: Why not stay in North Vancouver and fight for your people? Help them take their rightful place in the economic and social mainstream of this country. Help them to break stereotype and engage the outer world in a self-actualizing way.
Then one day – and I have never forgotten it – Chief Mathias said to us: If we ever get a chance to participate in the Olympics, we must grasp that opportunity; we will get to share our culture with the world.
And so it came to pass after many years of the hardest negotiations I have ever taken part in. First, the four Nations – Squamish Lil’wat, Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh – came together. And, it wasn’t easy…But we did it; we found common ground.
And then this first partnership led to another, then another – as we formed alliances with VANOC, the provincial and federal governments, the city of Vancouver, Whistler and many others.
We made history: For the first time, Aboriginal people would host the Olympics – as full and active partners in the Games!
What does this signify?
First, the Games provide an opportunity for Aboriginal peoples to showcase their cultures, their entrepreneurial spirit, to share a bit of us with visitors from across Canada and around the world.
The Olympics are providing jobs and development to local aboriginal communities; some living in isolated rural areas recognize the Games as an economic stimulus package helping them during the economic downturn.
Breaking stereotype, it joins together two words that, in this country, are so rarely put together: Aboriginal and success.
Tewanee Joseph is CEO of Four Host First Nations, the not-for-profit society, representing the four First Nations who will host the 2010 Games.
Excerpts taken from an October, 2009 speech by Tewanee Joseph. Published by Kelly McParland ed. (National Post) http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/10/20/tewanee-joseph-vancouver-games-means-no-more-dime-store-indians.aspx.
I think Canadians ever since the 1960s have been unsure of who they are, or are certainly trying to define who they are. Since the 1960s, individual achievements and the Olympics are something that plays into this. Olympic athletes, who do well, foster that idea of Canadian accomplishment quite nicely. This is something that has played out numerous times in terms of Cold War conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union, and even these days in terms of China showing that their country can accomplish the most Olympic medals. This reflects very positively on their political systems…that they can also foster great achievement there as well…
Certainly you’re seeing a very extensive advertising campaign playing up the idea of this [Vancouver 2010] as Canada’s moment. But I don’t know that this is any different from any other Olympics? There are always campaigns featuring Canadian athletes quite extensively. What is different in the last couple of Olympics is the extent to which funding programs here in Canada have centered on the high achievement…that has moved away from a very egalitarian spreading of funds over as many sports as possible to really focusing on elite athletes. I think that many will be extensively critical of our sports administrators if there isn’t a gold won on home soil. That was the failure of the last two [Canadian hosted] Olympics, to produce a Canadian gold.”
Professor Matthew Hayday is a historian at the University of Guelph. Hayday has taken part in the Intellectual Muscle program developed by the Vancouver Olympic Committee and the University of British Columbia. In his podcast “They Like Us, They Really Like Us! Defining Canada Through International Accomplishments” Hayday discusses Canadian national identity and shows how governments have increasingly attempted to link nationalism to the internationally-recognized accomplishments of Canadian citizens. In particular, the accomplishments of Olympic athletes are playing a key role in this reconfigured national identity.
I think [the Olympics] are a fabulous opportunity for athletes. For athletes to compete against each other and do so at that level is amazing. The problem with it though, is that over the years, the Olympics have become so much more commercialized that the pressure to win is not about competition anymore, but rather about the commercial side of the games and the bottom line.
I think that’s why you have all these situations with performance enhancing drugs and things of that nature. I think that [the Olympics] have become too commercialized and has certainly become more political. Just the granting of the Olympic Games has become such a political issue.
Way back when, the Olympics were much more pure in terms of a competitive environment but it just doesn’t seem that way anymore. I’m not a proponent of professional [athletes] playing in the Olympics – I think that the Olympics are for amateurs and I just don’t agree with [the current situation]. But you know, other people have different views and if your focus is commercialism, professional [athletes] will give you the [greatest benefit]. But I just don’t like it and it’s absolutely only going to get worse too.
When it’s all said and done, and all the posturing is finished and the athletes show up to compete, then I think it becomes a fascinating competition and environment. But I think everything prior to that is pretty tainted.
Tom Kendall
Director of Athletics: University of Guelph
What we were looking at was the real estate market to see about the economic impact of the Olympics. We were not interested in the real estate market only, we just used it as a tool. The idea was if you have higher economic growth, or more amenities, then the real estate prices will rise. If the Olympics happen somewhere and you’re not seeing this type of growth than that would suggest the Olympics are not having that type of effect. What we do is work with English language countries, so the United States, Canada and Australia, and separately for each group we construct a model for house prices and then see whether the cities that have had the Olympics have had house price growth at the time of the announcement, the lead up to the games and the six years following the games. And we find no consistent evidence that hosting the Olympics leads to a higher rate of house price growth. “
Tsur Somerville is the director of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate. Sommerville is the co-author of Hunting for the Olympics Bounce: Any Evidence in Real Estate? The study, released on Jan. 26, analysis housing markets leading up to, during and after the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta, the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, the 2000 Sydney Games and the Winter Olympics in Calgary (1988), Salt Lake City (2002) and Vancouver.
I can’t say I recall The 1988 Olympics vividly, but there were a few moments.
I remember “The Keg” was busy as many students wanted to congregate to watch the Canadian Olympians on the large screen TV. There was the night that Brian Orser skated…..and Elizabeth Manley (another popular figure skater), [also] when Canada played Sweden to a draw in men’s hockey. Eddie the Eagle (a popular and entertaining, yet humourously unsuccessful ski jumper) was everyone’s hero and joke of the day. I also remember that there was much buzz over the upcoming summer Olympics (also in 1988 but in Seoul, South Korea) because Victor Davis, the swimmer, was born in Guelph and was a gold and silver medal winner in 1984. There were high hopes that he would win gold again in 1988 but [he] ended up winning a silver (which is still fantastic).
In my opinion, people were so proud back then and there wasn’t so much a movement against the Olympics, but rather one in support of it. It symbolized then, what I still think it still symbolizes today, the pursuit of dreams through hard work and dedication.
Jacqueline Van Hoorn
Sports Editor of the Ontarion in 1988, the last time the Olympics were held in Canada
Student Perspective – what some of the University of Guelph students are saying about the 2010 Olympics:
Dan Simpson
I don’t really care. They couldn’t go on, they don’t have to go on it doesn’t bug me. I know it has been going on for centuries so what’s the point in stopping it now? It seems like a tradition that should be upheld but whether it goes on or not it’s not going to affect me in my everyday life.
Martin Schwable
I’m for them, sure. It’s one avenue where the world comes together and people try to do something that’s not strictly financial. I realize the athletes end up getting deals with companies after they’ve done well but that’s not the reason what they are there for; or at least not the intended reason. So I think it’s a good thing.
Andrew Collins
I like the idea of the olympics, but it puts the city in a lot of debt, does it not? I’m all for the sport and the competitions between nations because we get together, but I think that [financial] aspect of it is a pain. I’m glad that they are in Canada though, that’s for sure.
Karen Ho
I don’t really care. I’m not that into sports, so it’s meh.
Peter Slade
I don’t really have much of an opinion, I don’t see why people could be anti-olympics. It seems to be fairly cost effective, it seems to be well done. When people talk about taking over native lands and what not, I think when you see balanced writing about that, or balanced programming about that, you see that a lot of native leaders are in favour of it because it brings economic development, so I don’t really see a reason to be against it.
Emily Dineley
I’m pro-olympics. Not for any particular reason, I don’t watch them or anything, but I guess it’s good. It keeps up a healthy lifestyle and everybody can aspire to be an olympian..