The Dominion - 64

Smile, Vancouver!

dawn — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:00:23 +0000

Nearly 1,000 new surveillance cameras are here to stay

VANCOUVER—When the last of the Olympic athletes ski, skate and slide out of town, Vancouverites will be left with an unexpected legacy: 970 cameras.

“Security investment always leaves a good legacy of security for the country,” International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge told media gathered last February in Whistler, marking the one year countdown to the Games.

The security bill for the Olympics is expected to reach the $1 billion mark. A March 2009 Vancouver city report includes the total cost of installing Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems. The Vancouver 2010-Integrated Security Unit (V2010-ISU) will pay $2.1 million, in addition to the $435,000 the province is contributing. But all costs do not appear on the balance sheet. There are also social costs, such as the diminished personal privacy in public spaces.

In March 2009, Philip Boyle and Kevin Haggerty from the University of Alberta, published a report about surveillance and the Vancouver Olympics.

“Public officials occasionally use the pretext of the Olympics to introduce forms of surveillance that the public might oppose in any other context, capitalizing on the fact that in anticipation of the Games citizens tend to be more tolerant of intrusive security measures,” wrote Boyle and Haggerty in Privacy Games: The Vancouver Olympics, Privacy, and Surveillance.

The apparent acceptance of increased surveillance is something that requires a sober second thought, according to Adrienne Burk, professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Simon Fraser University.

“It’s important to ask ourselves what happens socially when we set up this kind of system of monitoring,” she told The Dominion. “Does the presence of cameras transmitting our images to unknown viewers help us know our neighbors better, or less well? Is there an increase in fear and suspicion, or in feelings of community and safety? We have to be careful when cameras are introduced for one reason, but left in place, or re-deployed for another, without these contextual conversations taking place.”

Although the Vancouver city report Privacy Games: The Vancouver Olympics, Privacy, and Surveillance points to the cruise ship terminal and entertainment district as key areas the cameras will be installed, the City of Vancouver and the V2010-ISU have not been specific regarding locations for all CCTV systems.

“Approximately 900 CCTV security cameras [have been] installed at venues for the Winter Games with another 50-70 CCTV security cameras installed in the urban domain," states the report. "The urban domain consists of areas where the public gather outside a venue,” reads the V2010-ISU's website.

The urban domains have been dubbed "Safe Assembly Areas" by the ISU. These are areas, also known as "Free Speech Zones," or "Protest Pens," where people are allowed to engage in lawful protest.

Minimal research has been conducted on the number of surveillance cameras that currently exist in the Downtown area. A collaborative effort between the Vancouver Public Space Network and the Simon Fraser University Surveillance Project aims to change that.

Late in August, volunteers set out to count and record the locations of cameras they could spot on city streets and alleyways.

“Surveillance cameras are distributed primarily in focused local areas or higher end shopping areas,” David Eby, Executive Director of BC Civil Liberties Association told The Dominion in a telephone interview.

Eby calls attention to the irony of the scenario of increased cameras in Vancouver. “You end up with a paradoxical situation where low income and middle income neighborhoods essentially, financially and logistically, facilitate the displacement of crime into their neighborhoods.”

People who are engaged in so-called “undesirable activities” such as panhandling in shopping districts like Robson Street or Gastown, may end up being displaced from public spaces as a result of security cameras that business owners argue are necessary in order to increase consumer confidence.

BC Civil Liberties has received confirmation from the ISU that no new cameras will be installed in the Downtown Eastside, an area of Vancouver that is the poorest off-reserve postal code in Canada.

The Carnegie Community Action Project (CCAP) identified some of the the problems with CCTV back in 1999 when it challenged the VPD’s efforts to install cameras in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

“Cameras do not provide employment or housing opportunities... Rather than targeting business-operators or landlords who take advantage of poverty and addictions, [the use of CCTV] focuses on the behavior of those individuals who do not fit the expectations or mores of the camera monitors,” their report states.

Ten years later, the CCAP report is still relevant to the concerns about the social costs of these cameras in the context of the Olympics and the Downtown Eastside.

Andrew Pask, director of the Vancouver Public Space Network, cautions that CCTV cameras should only be seen as a “tool of last resort.”

The pattern of Olympic cities, including Athens, Turin, and Beijing, has been to retain surveillance cameras after the Games.

The City of Vancouver has admitted the $435,000 worth of cameras will not be temporary, but part of a “redeployable unit.”

“You know, witnessing has always been a fundamental aspect of democracy, involving actors, observers, and recording of incidents,” professor Burk indicates.

“But cameras complicate that relationship, because the viewers and actors can be removed from each other, and recordings substantively altered," she said, arguing for a public debate before more cameras are installed.

Francesca Galasso is a 4th-year sociology student at Simon Fraser University. She lives in Vancouver.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

surveillance stencil

Military, Mounties Trained for the Games

dawn — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:41:52 +0000

Demonstrations a greater security threat than terrorism: CSIS

VANCOUVER—The role the Canadian Forces play in domestic security is not new in Canada but the security plans for the 2010 Olympics demonstrated an intensification of using military strategies to control public dissent.

The Integrated Threat Assessment Centre is a CSIS unit and part of the RCMP’s Joint Intelligence Group (JIG). The Centre initially identified foreign-based terrorism, crime, and domestic protests (in that order of severity) as the most plausible threats during 2010, but later reconfigured their analysis. The ITAC most recently listed international terrorism as a low-level threat and anti-Olympic demonstrations—including anti-globalization and First Nations activists—as the primary threat with a medium level rating.

The conflation of protests and terrorism has steadily increased since the 1999 “Battle of Seattle” and the 9/11 attacks which even further entrenched the notion that militarized strategies were essential in quelling dissent. The deployment of military forces alongside police is part of a “continual flow of technologies that are first developed for the military and later flow into police departments,” Luis Fernandez, author of Policing Dissent: Social Control and the Anti-Globalization Movement, told The Dominion.

“In the past few years we are seeing an increase, not of the police being militarized, but of police working with the military. It goes beyond militarization,” said Fernandez.

Domestic military support dates back to the "aid-to-the-civil" power mandate in the Militia Act of 1855. Indeed, the use of military force has been used steadily since the early 17th Century by the French, British, and Canadians to impose colonial rule under the auspice of maintaining law and order.

More recently, Canada deployed 16,000 troops during the 1976 Montreal Olympics and 4,500 soldiers during the Oka crisis in 1990.

"This role (of the military) has certainly expanded and evolved in the post-9/11 environment, and perhaps for the first time, we are seeing a much more concentrated effort on the part of the military to fulfill that obligation," Scott Taylor, editor of Esprit de Corps magazine, told The Dominion via email.

During the G8 Summit in Kananaskis in 2002, the RCMP coordinated the largest security operation in Canada. Approximately 1,500 officers and 5,000 soldiers were deployed and ordered to “shoot to kill” any demonstrators who breached the security perimeter.

Canada Command was established in 2006 to focus on domestic operations, as well as the remodeling of the Reserves into specialized geographical units responsible for, among other things, assisting law enforcement agencies and providing support for large public events.

At the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) meeting in Montebello, Quebec, in 2007, camouflaged Canadian Forces were in position to reinforce riot police, and military helicopters were used to patrol the Ottawa River. Meanwhile, police were using agents provocateurs to incite violence amongst demonstrators.

During the 2010 Olympics, the Canadian Forces will have had 4,500 military personnel in land, air, and sea capacities, including the use of “Special Operations Forces” (JTF 2). They have been allocated $212 million of the total security budget.

The military have set up bases and facilities throughout the region and have conducted numerous training exercises including Operations Bronze, Silver, and Gold, as well as anti-terrorism training exercises and a mock biological warfare scenario in suburban Vancouver.

Although the public has been assured that the military presence would be discrete, bomb-removal squads in Victoria, helicopter and CF-18 fly-overs above Vancouver, and other public displays of training exercises have not gone unnoticed. Some residents have grown wary from being subjected to the growing military presence.

Pre-Olympics military training was supplemented by the construction of up to 10 temporary military bases between North Vancouver and Pemberton in the lead up to the Games. Increased military presence could be felt in the region from Victoria to Kamloops, part of what has been dubbed "Fortress British Columbia."

In the months the Olympics began security forces received new gadgets, including: weapons, bullet-proof body armour, radar systems, surveillance equipment, and Vancouver Police-requested "tactical armoured vehicles."

The Olympics also acted as a catalyst for integration with the US, increasing the transfer and training of military and security knowledge and equipment. Phil Boyle, who studies the long-term effects of Olympic-style security systems on host cities and states, said the 2010 Olympics are “setting a precedent for harmonizing protocols between Canada and the US over military use.”

“The time and context are being provided by the Olympics,” said Boyle of an agreement signed early in 2008 which allowed cross-border military expeditions in times of distress.

At the upcoming G8 summit in Huntsville, Ontario, in June, the Canadian military operation is expected to be even larger than in Vancouver.

Andrew Crosby is a writer and musician based in Vancouver.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Olympic Security Tally

Unceded, British Columbia

dawn — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:00:24 +0000

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, BC)—On 2 July, 2003, a gathering of the International Olympic Committee in Prague awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics to Vancouver-Whistler. The Canadian entry beat out competing bids from Salzburg, Austria and Pyeongchang, South Korea. The IOC decision has provided a venue for international attention on sovereignty in “British Columbia.”

Vancouver is situated in the traditional territories of Coast Salish First Nations, specifically the Skwxwú7mesh, Xwméthkwyiem and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. This land has never been surrendered. According to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, it is the "hunting grounds" "reserved" for the "Indians" where they "should not be molested or disturbed."

The same unceded status holds for Whistler. “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,” said James Louie of the Interior Salish St’at’imc Nation, in a press package put out by the Olympics Resistance Network.

Out of these contradictions, a slogan arose: “No Olympics on stolen native land!”

The Olympic Games is "an energy grab, it's a land grab, and it disrespects inherent Aboriginal rights and title to the land and water," Mel Bazil of the Wet'suwet'en and Gitxsan nations told The Dominion.

Vancouver is named after the British seafarer Captain George Vancouver whose cartography, according to University of St. Andrews professor Dan Clayton, helped lay the foundation for the settlement and colonization of BC. “Colonization is as much an ongoing, arbitrary and vacuously conceived process of inscription as it is a process of physical occupation, resettlement, and domination,” wrote Clayton in his book Islands of Truth: The Imperial Fashioning of Vancouver Island.

Contact disrupted Indigenous lifeways and trade with Europeans became dominant. “Native-Western interaction was circumscribed by the capitalist logic of creative destruction,” wrote Clayton.

Later, securing land for the outnumbered colonialists was prioritized by Vancouver Island Governor James Douglas. In the early 1850s, he entered into 14 treaties with First Nations, where land was sold to “the white people for ever” for cash, blankets and clothing.

Subsequent to the Douglas Treaties, Treaty 8 in northeastern BC, the Nisga'a treaty, and Tsawwassen First Nation treaty have been concluded. Officially, 60 First Nations are said to be negotiating land claims in the BC Treaty Process.

Traditionally, Coast Salish peoples inhabited an area extending from the N'ch-ĩwana (Columbia River) in Oregon to Bute Inlet in BC that includes the important waterways of the Salish Sea (Juan de Fuca Strait, Georgia Strait, and Puget Sound). Whistler is in the Coast Mountains range, 125 km north of Vancouver — the traditional territory of the Lil'wat Nation (an Interior Salish people).

The Skwxwú7mesh, Xwméthkwyiem and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, along with the Lil’wat Nation, comprise the Four Host First Nations for the 2010 Olympics. This casts the appearance of a First Nations welcome for the 2010 Olympics.

Indigenous rights activist, Elder Harriet Nahanee of the Pacheenaht Nation on southeast Vancouver Island, fought that appearance. In February, 2007, Nahanee, aged 71, died one week after she was released from prison for protesting the destruction of Eagleridge Bluffs, an area considered unique in biodiversity. The bluffs were being clear cut for the Olympics related expansion of the Sea-to-Sky highway, which connects Vancouver to Whistler.

“The Four Host Nations is a corporate body made up primarily of government-funded Indian Act band council chiefs, not hereditary chieftainships," stated Lil’wat Elder, Seislom, in a press package provided by the Olympics Resistance Network.

"An overwhelming number of Indigenous people in these territories and in the interior are opposed to the Olympics because of the long-term impact including destruction of the land, commodification of Native art and culture, and the creation of long-term poverty once the few token jobs are gone," he continued.

“We're raising the issue of colonialism and lack of legal jurisdiction by the government in addition to the issue of land and exploitation of Indigenous culture,” Gord Hill of the Kwakwakwak'w nation told The Dominion.

Hill pointed to 2010 Olympics sponsor Hudson's Bay Company's recent decision to refuse a bid from the Quw'utsun' First Nation, a Coast Salish people on lower Vancouver Island, who founded and made the famous Cowichan sweaters for over a century. Instead the Olympic sweater will be made in China.

The Quw'utsun' are upset over the loss of jobs and an allegedly mock sweater. Quw'utsun' Chief Lydia Hwitsum said the Cowichan sweater is a registered trademark. HBC in a press release claims its sweater design is an original.

“It is the reality of strong opposition to the Olympic Games by Native peoples that has forced VANOC to desperately try and create the perception of Native support for the Olympics by throwing a lot of money to a few select people," according to No 2010 Resistance.

With files from Dawn Paley. Kim Peterson is the Original Peoples editor for The Dominion.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Unceded, British Columbia

In Our Own Words

Tim McSorley — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 06:12:18 +0000

Women living in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside weigh in on the Olympics

The Downtown Eastside Power of Women Group is based at the Downtown Eastside (DTES) Women’s Centre. We are women from all walks of life who are working poor, homeless or on social assistance; and we are all living in extreme poverty.

Many us of are single mothers or have had our children apprehended due to poverty; most of us have chronic mental or physical health issues, for example HIV and Hepatitis C infections; many of us have drug or alcohol addictions; and the majority of us have experienced and survived sexual violence and mental, physical, spiritual and emotional abuse. Indigenous members among us are affected by the legacy of residential schools and a history of colonization and racism.

One of the many issues we are concerned with are the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, which we have seen increase poverty and policing in the DTES, Canada’s poorest postal code.

Below, accounts from Power of Women members Stella August and Phillipa Ryan are accompanied by an illustration by member Priscillia May. Her image depicts the broken promises of the 2010 Olympics and the impacts of gentrification and criminalization in the DTES.

***

The DTES faces more homelessness and hunger than any other neighborhood in Vancouver. Every day, I walk by more homeless people on the street who are hungry, cold and wet. The Olympics have only increased this, creating man-made poverty which is unfair and unjust.

The government is spending billions on a circus, while putting people aside. They say they are fixing the city but how is the city being fixed if so many people are actually worse off? Across the city we are seeing cuts to education, decreased funding to the arts, more people unemployed. Is this the kind of society we want? The cost of renting in Vancouver is now outrageous. It is hard enough to live on a fixed income—whether pension, or social assistance or disability. Just in the DTES, 1,000 to 1,200 units of low-income housing have been lost since the Olympic bid due to closures and conversions to tourist rentals. Meanwhile, over 1,500 new market homes, primarily condominiums, are being built here.

We are also witnessing a dramatic increase in police presence in this neighbourhood. There are often six to eight police officers on just the one intersection at Main and Hastings. One day a few of us were walking down the street and heard a woman yelling for help. As we ran, we saw her being dragged out of a police car, getting kicked to the ground, and being handcuffed. She had apparently been chased by a guy with a knife and she ran into the police car for help. The police had dragged her out of their car, berating her for entering a police car, and arrested her. They did not do anything to help her. With the Olympics, this is the kind of increased protection we can expect.

Street vendors are especially being harassed and are given tickets for by-law infractions. The City has banned dumpsters from the downtown core, eliminating the ability of binners [dumpster divers] to make a living. All this to “clean up” the neighbourhood for Olympic officials and tourists; but what is the cost to humanity? They might be able to temporarily sweep things under the rug, but what Olympic legacy will be left for our grandchildren? The City of Vancouver and the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit are also trying to change the planned route of our historic Feb 14, 2010 March for Murdered and Missing Women, something far more significant and sacred than their Games.

It is easy to turn a blind eye to the plight of the DTES and to stereotype us all as alcoholics and addicts, but we are all humans and we all have a story. I am living proof of the residential school era. I was separated from my parents, my family and my culture. I lost my language. I was beaten and abused severely in residential school. All across Canada, Indian Residential Schools are one of the starkest reminders of the legacy of genocide against Indigenous peoples.

Like many others, I am not satisfied with last year’s formal apology from the federal government. The apology was supposed to start a new relationship with Indigenous peoples, one based on respect. But the 2010 Olympic Games represents just one of the many examples of the continuation of the same kind of colonial relationship: we are not consulted, are forcibly displaced, and endure increasing poverty for their benefit. This is not the start of a new relationship. This is why to me the apology is like a slap in the face, the kind you experience in an abusive relationship where one day you are beaten, the next day you are sent flowers with a sorry note, and then you are beaten again.

This is why I and the DTES Power of Women group are united against the impacts of the Olympics and we have been doing a lot to make our voices heard and our opposition strong. There is a lot of power and unity among us; we may be poor but our spirit is not. All my relations.

—Stella August

When one hears "Olympics," one thinks of good health, strength and endurance. There seems to be few, if any, Indigenous athletes in Canada. The powers that be have been trying to break the spirits of Indigenous people with poverty so that we will sign away our lands and rights by their treaty process. Over 150 years our once abundant forestry and fishery have been taken and so we have gone from being free self-sustaining individuals living off clean, rich land to being beggars in our own country. Chemicals from monocultural farming, manufacturing, mining and the tar sands continue to pollute our once pristine air, land and water. None of the stolen lands or assets have benefited the people to whom it once belonged.

The ugliness of our lives, such as drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, chronic unemployment, watered down education and health problems from an inadequate diet are just some of the prices we have paid for the so-called democracy of Canada which continues to justify the thievery of our lands and resources. In spite of the apology for the residential school experience, the policy of racism and genocide continues. I saw my parents resist injustices just as they told us our ancestors resisted from first contact; so it isn't as if Indian Affairs doesn't know what is wrong with the system that they have imposed on us. We now know that the government has designed our lifestyle by micro-managing our lives the way they, as partners to other so-called democracies like the USA, did to the Iraqis and the Palestinians.

The only improvement to our lives that has been bandied about recently was to legalize prostitution. I suppose it is so our government acts as our pimps as the Australian government has done. The Australian government recently sent a leaflet to all prostitutes recommending they use numbing agents so they can service more clients! After dishonoring the contribution of Indigenous people in the First and Second World Wars, the military is promising to pay for post-secondary education for the descendants of those veterans so they can go kill other people's children. The military are particularly targeting tribal people with this program so none survive to lay claim to their lands and resources. It looks as if the only way Indigenous people in Canada will be taxpayers is through prostitution and the military. The so-called "Indian Problem" will never go away as it is a multi-billion dollar industry.

The Olympics should be terminated. Its standards have been achieved by cheating. Of what practical value is winning the gold? Look at the price the Peruvians have paid for their gold. Such frivolity is unacceptable when there is so much poverty in the world. Such high standards of physical excellence going hand-in-hand with bankrupt moral ethics—to what purpose? Why is there so much slavery when there are so many so-called democracies? Perhaps that is why they need to deliver it at the point of a gun. Sorry is not good enough for what has been done to our humanity. It is no longer about educating them. They have made their choices; let them pay through their karma.

—Phillipa Ryan

Stella August was born in 1945 in Ahousat, BC and is a long-time resident of the Downtown Eastside.

Phillipa Ryan was born 1943 in Kitwanga, Skeena River, BC. She has been a resident of the Downtown Eastside off and on since 1980.

Priscillia May is from Wet'suwet'en Territory. She is an activist, artist, actor and volunteer in the DTES. She has been involved with organizing the February 14, 2010 memorial March for Murdered and Missing Women. A single parent, her child is her stone, who inspires and encourages her.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Rings over East Vancouver

An Olympic Failure

dawn — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:21:34 +0000

At least 137 Native women missing and murdered in BC since 1980

MONTREAL—The February 14 Memorial March for Murdered and Missing Women has taken route along Hastings street in Vancouver every year since 1991 to honour Vancouver's murdered women, as well as more than 68 women still missing from the city's Downtown Eastside (DTES). East Hastings St, which runs straight through the DTES, is often referred to as the poorest postal code in Canada, and is notorious for a highly visible level of homelessness, drug use and sex work.

Vancouver's City Hall confirmed its support this fall for the march at the insistence of DTES residents, but previously, the city, along with 2010 Olympic officials and the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit, attempted to change the procession's route or date to defer to the predicted flow of Olympics-generated traffic on Hastings Street.

The games begin today, February 12, two days prior to the march. Already, the Olympics have led to increased poverty, homelessness, and policing in possibly the poorest neighbourhood in Canada.

The epidemic of missing and murdered women in Canada has not improved since the inaugural march 18 years ago. In fact, it appears to have worsened, particularly for Indigenous women and girls.

Of 521 known cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women across Canada since roughly 1980, half have occurred in the last decade. BC has seen the worst, where, as of 2008, approximately 137 of those cases had occurred.

According to Walk4Justice activists, (a group made up largely of Indigenous women who hold annual walks demanding justice for their missing and murdered friends and loved ones), and the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC), the actual number of missing and murdered Indigenous women is much higher, and likely in the thousands. Underestimation, they say, is due to insufficient research funding, which is also a phenomenon of the last decade.

Craig Benjamin, a campaigner for Indigenous rights with Amnesty International, estimates that Canadian police only note victims' racial identity about 60 per cent of the time, and the information is often inaccurate when they do. Many officers do not see the relevance of the information in the first place. “If [victims] don't look Aboriginal in their eyes, then they don't record it,” he says.

According to the 2008 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count, almost 3,000 people in the area are homeless, a 22 per cent increase since 2005. Indigenous people make up 32 per cent of this population, though they make up just two per cent of the city's total population.

Front-line Indigenous human rights activist Gladys Radek, of Vancouver, has participated in the Walk4Justice for several years. While the 2008 Walk4Justice route went all-out (Walkers made a three-month trek from Vancouver to Parliament Hill in Ottawa) the month-long 2009 Walk last June saw 17 Indigenous women retracing the stretch of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, dubbed the "Highway of Tears," where so many of their relations had violently passed from this world.

“Once we got past Prince George,” said Radek, “it was really emotional because we were reaching the heart of the Highway of Tears. Lots of the women's spirits were with us as we were walking."

“You could feel there was no work being done for the family members. We were asking family members [up North] about certain organizations, and there were no answers for them up there so it was really disheartening. A real severe lack of support for any type of justice, equality, closure, or accountability. We're hoping to change that.”

Organizations from the grassroots Walk4Justice all the way to the United Nations have called on the Canadian government for a public investigation into the appallingly high number of unresolved, uninvestigated murders and disappearances of Indigenous women.

In November, 2008, the UN gave Canada an ultimatum to report back in a year on the status of more than 500 cases that "have neither been fully investigated nor attracted priority attention, with the perpetrators remaining unpunished."

Canada has not responded.

The problem of missing and murdered Indigenous women is systemic, and an extension of ongoing racist and sexist colonial policies such as the Indian Act. The issue is also country-wide, with the frequency of violence against Indigenous women growing in eastern provinces. BC, though, is still the site of the most alarming level of gendered and racialized violence toward Native women in the country.

Ironically, when deciding where to hold the 2010 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) faced a choice between Pyeongchang, South Korea, and Vancouver. While South Korea pitched itself as the "peace" candidate, Vancouver sold itself as the "safety and security" candidate. The provincial government presented BC as a place where everybody gets along: rich and poor, rural and urban, Native and non-Native.

Increased Susceptibility to Homelessness, Trafficking

A June 2007 report by the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) found two million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced in the last 20 years to clear space for the Olympics. Vancouver has been no exception. The DTES has seen mass closure of social housing and low-income hotels, triggered by an effort to create more space for tourists and corporate investors.

Indigenous women have been at the receiving end of the city's clear priority of Games over homes: 45 per cent of homeless women identified as Aboriginal in the 2008 Greater Vancouver Homeless Count.

The precariousness of their living situation also leads to more Native women than the rest of the homeless population stating that they are involved in "illegal activities" for income. Most of these women said said they were involved in sex work.

This is reflected in other studies: Gang expert Michael Chettleburgh has found that 90 per cent of underage, urban sex workers in Canada are Aboriginal.

Canada is not ordinarily associated with violations like sex trafficking, but it was not even illegal here until 2001. The Olympics, however, have a long tradition of arriving hand-in-hand with a massive influx of prostitution and the pseudo-legalization of the sex industry for the benefit of businessmen and elite athletes. Again, Vancouver is no exception.

Former NWAC president Beverly Jacobs has stated that the organization has reason to believe that trafficking is playing a significant role in the continually high level of missing Indigenous women and girls, but the only body with adequate resources for an investigation of that caliber is the Canadian government, which has proven to be the least likely to implicate itself.

In Vancouver, trafficking has been historically associated with Asian and Indigenous women, beginning in the mid- to late-1800s as European colonization began. Today, both groups are still targeted much more than other population sectors.

“Vancouver is considered to be a hub for Pacific human trafficking... Traffickers will view the 2010 Olympics as the biggest opportunity for them in decades. Any time you have an influx of foreign tourists and money, you’ll see a huge demand for the sex trade," says Vancouver journalist Magda Ibrahim.

According to a report by Calgary-based Future Group, titled, Faster, Higher, Stronger: Preventing Human Trafficking at the 2010 Olympics, “There is a real risk that traffickers will seek to profit from the 2010 Olympics... This event could create an increased demand for prostitution, and also give an easy cover story for victims to be presented as ‘visitors’ by traffickers.”

Although the scale of trafficking within Canada is difficult to measure, it is likely much higher than RCMP estimates of six to eight hundred women per year.

Ottawa-based researcher Anupriya Sethi has identified trafficking triangles through which Aboriginal victims are moved: Saskatoon-Edmonton-Calgary-Saskatoon; Saskatoon-Regina-Winnipeg-Saskatoon.

"I don't know if there are international linkages," she says. "Once you're in Vancouver, where are you taken? Once you're in Toronto, are you taken to New York or do you go to Los Angeles? I don't know. It hasn't been explored."

“There’s a total myth that Aboriginal women either consent to or are born into the sex trade,” said Jo-Ann Daniels, interim executive director for the Metis Settlements General Council in Edmonton. “The average age of Aboriginal girls who are human trafficked is between seven and 12 years old.”

"Basically, their handlers start them in Vancouver," said Chantal Tie, a lawyer with the National Association of Women and The Law.

"They work for them there for a while, then they're sold to someone in Winnipeg and then to someone in Toronto, and so on down the line as they get moved around the country."

The RCMP's National Aboriginal Policing Service has expressed a desire to explore the issue further, but says it lacks the funding and human resources to do so.

Considering the extremely poor record of police investigations into violence against sex trade workers and Indigenous women in Canada, it is unlikely that any real attempt to check these practices during 2010 will take place.

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie is a writer active with the Missing Justice campaign in Montreal.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the 2010 Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Missing and Murdered March

Missing and Murdered March II

2010 Carte Blanche

dawn — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:11:49 +0000

Olympic spending tallies won’t come in till the party’s over

VANCOUVER—“There’s nothing wrong with a scaled down Olympics,” said CTV sports anchor Brian Williams in his keynote address at the 2009 Webster awards in Vancouver.

Williams' comment was met with applause by hundreds of journalists in attendance for the ceremony marking the year's best reporting in BC. They seemed to have forgotten that beyond some cosmetic cuts, there is little that has been scaled down for the 2010 Games in Vancouver.

Instead, the cost of the games has risen drastically. In 2003, the Auditor General of BC estimated that the total cost of hosting the 2010 Olympics would be $2.89 billion.

The report estimated BC would incur costs of $1.2 billion related to hosting the Games. This estimate left out most infrastructure costs, but the figure was twice the amount touted by the Vancouver Organizing Committee and the BC government, who claimed the Games would cost the province $600 million.

The cost to the federal government for hosting the Games was also underestimated. For example, the security budget, originally estimated at $175 million, has since ballooned to over $900 million, more than two thirds of which will be covered by the feds.

The Economist reported in September that BC’s costs for the Games are closer to $4.75 billion, an estimate that includes the Sea to Sky highway expansion, $1 billion for the Convention Centre (which will house media during the Games) and the $2 billion Canada Line extension of the Sky Train. Add to that the security budget and other costs, and the tab is at least $6 billion.

At the municipal level, Vancouver City Council had to bail out the developers backing the construction of the Olympic Village with $458 million.

“I’m willing to bet that it’s going to be a pretty expensive party, once it’s all tallied up,” Marc Lee, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, told The Dominion at his office in Vancouver.

“We won’t know until it’s over how much we ultimately spent on it.”

Whatever the cost overruns, the province of British Columbia will be the one to pick up the tab. “Any cost increases or revenue shortfalls the [Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games] cannot control—arising from inflation, interest or exchange rate fluctuations, the state of the economy, world threat levels, weather events and so on—are a financial responsibility of the Province,” reads a 2003 report from the BC Auditor General.

All levels of government have announced large deficits and spending cuts over the last few months.

Vancouver now faces a shortfall of $61 million. Since the city is not allowed to run a deficit, this will mean new rounds of cuts and tax increases.

The provincial government suspended balanced budget legislation for the second time this year, and will now run four consecutive years of deficits. The deficit forecasted for 2009-2010 is $2.8 billion, BC’s largest ever.

The federal government changed their budget estimate, upping the deficit to $51.9 billion over the next six years.

A recent report by Toronto Dominion Bank suggests that the federal deficit over the next year for Canada and all the provinces combined could equal $100 billion.

These revenue shortfalls result in part from the global recession and falling commodity prices, and are being used to justify even more cuts to the social safety net in BC and Canada.

Lee said he wouldn’t be surprised if VANOC tables a “massive” deficit as the games close out, which would be rolled into the provincial budget and become “part of the justification for further cuts elsewhere.”

BC’s economy brings in about $200 billion a year in revenue, leading some people to argue that even if the total cost of the games checks out higher than the current $4.75 billion, it would be a relatively small portion of provincial spending.

But, counters Lee, motioning out his office window towards Vancouver's downtown east side, “symbolically, the challenges out there on the street, and the need for housing, and other infrastructure, and just the sheer amount of political energy that’s been put into the Olympics, you kind of wonder whether there could have been better uses of that money.”

Dawn Paley is a journalist in Vancouver. She is covering the Olympics at 2010.mediacoop.ca.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Big Owe

"Illegal" Olympics Sign?

"We Better Be Ready"

Tim McSorley — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:00:14 +0000

2010 resistance anticipates a rough ride

VANCOUVER—Earlier this year, RCMP officers with Vancouver 2010 security intelligence began knocking on doors in Victoria and Vancouver to interrogate social justice advocates about their plans for the Olympics. The officers had no warrants, no probable cause, and no due process. So far, they've gotten no information. But it appears that this tiny piece of the Olympic security machine has spent thousands of dollars on intimidating local residents.

The cost of security for the 2010 Games will be around $1 billion, and may be more, when the final tally comes due. A billion dollars could feed, clothe and house 20,000 homeless people for a year, or provide clean drinking water to dozens of remote communities.

Instead, the government is funding 16,000 police, soldiers, and security personnel. The Games will include helicopters overhead, military vessels offshore, large-scale road closures, miles of security fences, and almost 1,000 closed-circuit television cameras.

Two key figures in the RCMP's Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit have extensive experience in using force to quell dissent.

Readers may remember RCMP Sgt. Maj. Hugh Stewart, nicknamed "Sergeant Pepper" after the 1997 Asia Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) at the University of British Columbia. Stewart won fame for unleashing streams of pepper spray on a crowd of students holding a sit-in outside the Leader's Summit. Stewart is also the master architect of the secret security plans for 2010.

Assisting Stewart in pepper-spraying students at APEC was Sgt. Gary R. "Bud" Mercer. The RCMP has named him chief of the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit.

Mercer, now an assistant RCMP commissioner, has shown up at crucial moments in other high-profile political confrontations. In 1995, he tracked two people who fled a pickup truck disabled by RCMP explosives outside Gustafsen Lake, where First Nations activists were occupying a Sun Dance ceremony site. That confrontation became the largest paramilitary operation in BC history. After a heavy one-sided firefight and a month-long standoff, the Ts'peten Defenders surrendered and 15 people went to jail.

In July 2000, Sgt. Mercer appeared at the climax of a siege in the Elaho Valley near Whistler, BC. Wilderness advocates were using civil disobedience to block loggers from accessing old-growth forests. Four environmentalists were perched in tree platforms supported by ropes and cables fifty meters up when Mercer pulled in with dozens of emergency response officers, sharpshooters, helicopters, and canine units. Mercer then led the charge to dismantle the blockade, using a long-handled cable-cutter to sever one of the cables attached to the tree platforms, causing them to shift and drop under the four tree-sitters. Branches and backup ropes stopped the platforms from falling further, and no one was hurt, but the action panicked the activists and witnesses on the ground.

One of the tree-sitters made a complaint, and charges of aggravated assault were filed against Mercer. The charges were quickly dropped, however, and the tree-sitter was later convicted of filing a false report—a charge that he and other witnesses still feel is a gross miscarriage of justice.

More recently, a massive 2008 police raid at the Bear Mountain Tree Sit on Vancouver Island may be a premonition of 2010 security operations. There, a protest camp next to a rare cave and endangered wildlife habitat was delaying highway interchange construction. The raid consisted of a small army of SWAT-type officers—armed with automatic weapons, sniper rifles, and dogs—storming the camp before dawn and forcing five terrified campers to surrender at gunpoint. All charges were later dropped. While there is no evidence thus far that Mercer or Stewart was involved, the raid draws from the same playbook they used years ago. Hundreds of military ration boxes left scattered across the site suggest a joint RCMP-military task force was at work.

In July 2009, Mercer spoke to Vancouver City Council about the threats the security police are preparing to handle. He made several references to past incidents of police violence against protesters, according to observers.

Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, an outspoken Olympic critic, found Mercer's speech disturbing. "Certainly all the violent incidents that Bud Mercer brought up to justify the RCMP's security plans—Montebello, APEC, WTO in Seattle—those were all incidents of police violence, not protester violence."

Chris Johnson filmed Mercer's presentation for B-Channel News. He said Mercer's Vancouver presentation was illuminating. "He's talking about police suppressing political demonstrations, not controlling rowdies or preventing terrorism, for example. He's describing their bag of tricks here. So we better be ready."

Zoe Blunt is a Victoria-based writer and environmental non-profit director.

For up-to-the-minute Olympics resistance coverage, check out the Vancouver Media Co-op, and the Convergence website. Follow the VMC on twitter!

Mercer

Sacrifice

Moira Peters — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:46:54 +0000

sacrifice.jpg

Issue #64

dru — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:39:36 +0000

Subhead:

The Olympics Issue

Cover Image:

dominion-issue64-olympics-1.jpg

Body:

Download Issue #64 (Winter 2009-10) [22 MB, pdf]

To read articles from this issue on the web, visit this page.

Issue #64 is formatted as forty pages of letter sized paper (8.5x11").

(You need Acrobat Reader or an application that reads pdf files to view the print version of this issue.)

Distribution rights:

You are free (and encouraged) to download, print, and distribute as many copies of the Dominion as you like, with the following restrictions:

the content of the paper will not be modified
no advertising or additional content will be attached to the paper
15% of any profits derived from the sale or distribution of the Dominion will be paid to the Dominion
We ask regular readers for a voluntary contribution of between $2 and $10 per issue. See our donation page for details.

Exceptions to any of these restrictions may be granted on a case by case basis. Contact us with any questions.

"Greenest Games Ever"

Tim McSorley — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:00:40 +0000

What environmental legacy will the Olympics leave for British Columbians?

WHISTLER—With the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games less than three weeks away, concerns are growing around the long-term effects of this three-week event on Whistler’s prized natural environment.

WHISTLER OLYMPIC VENUES
While Vancouver’s Olympic venues were constructed in urban areas, Whistler’s were built far from public view in remote and less disturbed areas.

As the official mountain host, Whistler wants to show the world that it can hold a world-class event with minimal impact on the environment and make these the “greenest games ever.” It has been more of a challenge than expected.

WHISTLER OLYMPIC PARK
Completion of the $119.7 million Whistler Olympic Park in the Callaghan Valley came with a hefty environmental price. Between 89,000 and 120,000 old-growth trees were removed to build the "Olympic legacy" trails and ski jumps. The site contains 55 kilometres of public Nordic trails, three stadiums, two ski jumps and a Nordic day
lodge.

The venues are designed to meet Canadian Green Building LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Silver designation. Waste wood was chipped and composted and diverted from the local landfill.

According to Ann Duffy, VANOC’s Corporate Sustainability Officer, “We took conversations with stakeholders and turned them into actions. We shrunk the Nordic venues by 30 per cent and built them on a more compact, geographical area, so fewer trees were cut.”

Local environmental groups claim VANOC failed to listen to their concerns, pointing to ski trails fast-tracked from the original designs and cut without buffers around watersheds or sensitive wetlands.

Whistler’s environmental organization AWARE (Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment) intended to work with VANOC to minimize the Games’ impacts on the environment.

“VANOC said they would look into the width and extent of the legacy trails, but nothing changed,” said Sara Jennings, AWARE president. “We got the feeling VANOC was only interested in checking us off the stakeholder list as having been consulted.”

AWARE was concerned about the "lack of studies done on the impact of the legacy trails on grizzly bear habitat,” said Jennings.

To date, VANOC has refused to study this, despite the BC Ministry of the Environment designating the area a grizzly bear rehabilitation area.

As a stakeholder in the Sea-to-Sky Land Resource Management Plan (LRMP), AWARE wanted to designate a large tract of land for the Games and call it the Olympic Wildlife Refuge. VANOC told them the name “Olympic” couldn’t be used. In the end, the land was
protected, but without Olympic association.

WHISTLER MEDALS PLAZA
Over 800 trees were removed from the four-acre forest in Whistler village in spring 2008 to build the $13.67 million Whistler Medals Plaza. Although the resort already has five plazas for outdoor gatherings, Whistler’s municipal officials decided to build another.

NESTERS WETLAND TRANSIT FACILITY
Last summer, this rare, red-listed wetland north of Whistler Village was cleared virtually overnight by BC Transit for the new Whistler Transit Facility and a refueling depot for the experimental Hydrogen Highway.

The wetland, owned by BC Hydro, has no record of receiving a federal or provincial environmental impact assessment, and was cleared with wider than normal buffers to accommodate large compressed hydrogen storage tanks. Prior to the Games, Whistler had lost 72 per cent of its wetland. With the destruction of this sensitive site, it has lost even more.

WHISTLER SLIDING CENTRE
The $104.9 million luge, bobsleigh and skeleton venue on Blackcomb Mountain has received the popular label of Whistler's “white elephant” from journalists and activists. VANOC used sustainable environmental design principles for the site access, energy use and construction materials. The waste heat from the refrigeration system will be reused to heat the refrigeration plant building and guest services building.

However, the “fridge in the sky” requires the same amount of energy to operate as Whistler and Blackcomb’s Mountain facilities combined, and stores 68,000 kilograms of ammonia. Any leaks would be detrimental to
nearby residents and wildlife.

WOMEN’S DOWNHILL COURSE, CREEKSIDE
VANOC was credited for re-aligning the Women’s Downhill course to minimize the impact on red-tailed frogs, but the realignment went beyond what some biologists considered "safe." Environmental groups believe that the new course will cause sediment build-up in nearby creeks.

EXPANSION OF HIGHWAY 99
Thousands of trees were lost and sensitive ecosystems compromised to build the new $650 million highway to Whistler. Vulnerable areas like Eagle Ridge Bluffs were bulldozed to make an overland route instead of a tunnel.

WHISTLER ATHLETES' VILLAGE
On all accounts, the Whistler Athletes' Village is a success story. It’s one of only 20 Canadian developments designated as LEED-ND (Neighbourhood Development). It received the 2008 Energy Action Award for “its compact, low-carbon, resident-restricted housing with its innovative, alternative energy heating system.”

“The two Athlete Villages use 50 per cent less water and energy than previous venues,” said Duffy.

THE BEST WE CAN DO?
While VANOC touts successes such as the Sustainability Star Program and Project Blue Sky, which encourages people to take on climate change through athletic action, many residents believe the IOC continues to destroy the global environment for corporate gain.

“There’s nothing innovative about clearing every tree in sight or destroying wetlands and grizzly bear habitats. Recycling, composting or building to LEED standards is not innovative—but following the norm,” said Jennings. “Where are the solar panels, the composting toilets, electric cars and green jobs that can be showcased to the
world?”

When guests go home after March 2010 and the party dies down, Whistler residents will be able to assess just how “green” the Games really were.

Pina Belperio is a writer, politico and community activist who reports on Olympic-related issues in her hometown of Whistler, BC.

Trees forever

Medals Plaza

Chicago Thwarts the Bid

dawn — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 06:06:05 +0000

How one American city dodged the Olympic bullet

WASHINGTON, DC—"This is a devastating blow for the people of Chicago." So said ESPN's Chicago-born Michael Wilbon.

But the decision to send the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio was in fact a victory for the people of Chicago. Pushing back against immense pressure from Mayor Daley's political machine, organizations like No Games Chicago went grassroots, corner to corner, and spoke out against the Olympic storm of gentrification, tax hikes, and police misconduct. They are a model of resistance in the Obama era. Certainly one reason the United States got the high hat was the lingering bad taste of George W. Bush. The global community, after eight years of sneering contempt from Washington, DC, isn't ready to rinse with the Obama mouthwash.

But it's the community activists of Chicago who should feel tremendously gratified. In the Windy City, the hastily formed group No Games Chicago took to the streets, shadowing Olympic organizers at every stop. They turned almost every public relations gambit into challenged, contested, space. They—along with the millions of Chicagoans who expressed their trepidation in polls—saved their city. They have every right to say with pride, "That's the Chicago way!"

As for Barack Obama, he may not be feeling it, but he is the luckiest man alive. Yes, he traveled all the way to Copenhagen and didn't even get a lousy t-shirt, but he is very fortunate his bid went down like it did.

Obama is the first US president to ever appear before the International Olympic Committee and plead for the Games. The Games coming to the Windy City would have been an eight-year distraction and political gold for his opponents. Every time an Olympic project came in late and over budget, every time a scandal hit the tabloids, every time a crime was captured on a cell phone camera it would have been "Obama's Olympic Folly."

The person who really has egg on his face is Mayor Richard Daley. He wanted to show everyone he was a bigger man—and mayor—than his Daddy, with an Olympic-sized stadia to boot. Now expect all the Daley arm-twisting and all the dirty skullduggery in the lead up to both come to light and come home to roost. Mayor Daley, rocking a 35 per cent approval rating, said that the Games would be "a huge boost to our economy, raising it to a new level. The Games will help us recover sooner from the recession that still grips our nation and enable us to better compete in the global economy."

There was only one problem with this argument: the history of the Olympic Games almost without exception brands it as a lie. As Sports Illustrated's Michael Fish—an Olympic supporter—has written, "You stage a two-week athletic carnival and, if things go well, pray the local municipality isn't sent into financial ruin."

In fact, the very idea that Chicago could have been an appropriate setting for the Olympics might have been hatched by Jon Stewart for a four-year supply of comedic fodder. To greater or lesser degrees, the Olympics bring gentrification, graft and police violence wherever they nest. Even without the Olympic Games, Chicago has been ground zero in the past decade for the destruction of public housing, political corruption raised to an art form, and police violence.

It was also difficult for Chicago residents to see how this would help their pocketbooks, given that Daley pledged to the International Olympic Committee that any cost overruns would be covered by taxpayers.

This is why a staggering 84 per cent of the city opposed bringing the Games to Chicago if it cost residents a solitary dime. Even if the Games were to go off without a hitch—which would happen only if the setting was lovely Shangri-La—not even half the residents would support hosting the Games.

The Obamas, former Chicago residents, should have stood with their city. Instead, we had the sight of Barack, Michelle, and Oprah trying to out-muscle Pele and Brazil for a place at the Olympic trough.

Michelle Obama said in her speech to the IOC, "My father was disabled, and I think what it would have meant for him to see someone in his shoes compete. Kids need to see that and that needs to be celebrated just as much, if not more."

This seems more like an argument to support the Paralympics (a tremendous event) but that's beside the point. Michelle Obama should have realized that if the Olympics had come to Chicago when she was a young girl on Chicago's working class southside, her home may have been torn down to make way for an Olympic facility. No word on how being out of house and home would have helped her disabled father.

The question is, why did Obama risk this humiliation?

Maybe Obama wants the Olympic fairy dust enjoyed by Ronald Reagan at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles or Bill Clinton at the 1996 games in Atlanta. Or perhaps he is returning favor to the developers and other sundry connected people in the Windy City who will make out like bandits once the smoke has cleared. But his intentions are clear: he wants the glitz, glamour, and prestige of the Games and he wants it for the Daley machine. What the people of Chicago want doesn't seem to compute.

But we shouldn't be surprised at this point that Obama is tin-eared to the concerns of Chicago residents. As Paul Krugman wrote September 20 on the banker bonuses, "The administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from the perception that it's giving taxpayers' hard-earned money away to Wall Street." Shoveling taxpayers' money into the Olympic maw is no better, especially in these tough times.

No Games Chicago organizer Alison McKenna said to me, "I oppose the Olympics coming to Chicago because instead of putting money toward what people really need, money will be funneled to real estate developers who will be tearing down Washington Park and other important community resources. I oppose the Olympics coming to Chicago because the nonprofit child-welfare agency that I work for had to sustain budget cuts and layoffs, while Chicago has spent $48.2 million on the 2016 Olympic bid, as of July 2009."

There is an urgency to building resistance to these kinds of priorities. Right now, the right wing is shamelessly adopting populist rhetoric and the power of protest to sell an agenda of racism and fear wrapped in taxpayer protection. The big public voice against Obama's trip to Copenhagen was the repellent Republican National Committee chief Michael Steele who believes, and this is hilarious, that "at a time of war and recession" Obama needs to stay home. It shouldn't be a scoundrel like Steele who represents a party of privatization and occupation who delivers that message.

Now is the time to build a pole of attraction on the left for people furious at corporate greed amidst a recession. This needs to happen, and not just for the Windy City. In Vancouver, the struggle is now defensive in nature as our anti-Olympic heroes strive to find a way to sand off the worst edges of the Olympic scythe, cutting through one of the world's most beautiful cities. It's about building a vibrant protest movement that believes in social justice not the rank divisiveness of the right. Obama likes to say that change comes from "outside Washington." It's time to take him at his word.

Dave Zirin writes for The Nation magazine, among other publications. His most recent book is A People's History of Sports in the United States.

Chicago.Bid.Protesters

Land and Rights in Canada

dawn — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:47:03 +0000

Don't let Harper play hockey with human rights

COLDSTREAM, BC—We have reached a very critical time in our struggle for our land and human rights as Indigenous Peoples. The Canadian government knows this and has been doing everything in their power to trick us into extinguishing our Aboriginal Title through negotiations under their policies—including their Comprehensive Land Claims and Self-Government Policies. Canada’s courts have been the alternative to negotiations, and there we have had measured success. But the establishment Indigenous organizations, like the Assembly of First Nations, have been stuck with what the government is dictating to them.

As Indigenous Peoples we need to think about what to do now. In early August 2009, Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl sent a strong message to the British Columbia Treaty Commission (BCTC) Common Table, a group of First Nations from different BCTC negotiating tables who came together to raise concerns regarding consistent obstacles they all faced in negotiating land claims agreements in BC. He said that the federal government will not change the existing Comprehensive Land Claims and Self-Government Policies.

The federal government has ignored all objections from groups who do not negotiate and groups who are inactive in their negotiations. Now they have stated clearly to those actively negotiating that they will not review their land and self-government policies.

It is important for Indigenous Peoples who have not signed treaties surrendering their Title to realize that we are all under the federal Comprehensive Land Claims and Self-Government Policies. We must realize that any land claims and self-government agreement will be determined by these policies. Right now, this will mean that the best deal Indigenous Peoples can get is the Nisga’a, Tsawwassen or Maa-nulth Final Agreements. This requires the extinguishment of Aboriginal Title, according to what the government has put on the table under the Comprehensive Land Claims and Self-Government Policies. Indigenous Peoples will have to give up their tax-exemption, take their land in fee simple, and agree to be under provincial control.

There needs to be a fundamental change in Canada’s Land Claims and Self-Government Policies. These policies need to address the direct link between Aboriginal Title and our human rights as Indigenous Peoples. Canada must abandon their existing policy of extinguishment and assimilation and adopt a plan of recognition and co-existence. This dramatic change must be forced on the federal government by direct action from Indigenous
Peoples and our supporters. We get a lot of support for taking direct action. We just need faith and courage to stand up for our rights.

The 1980 Constitution Express, an international grassroots campaign that involved sending a train with hundreds of Indigenous protesters from the west coast to Ottawa, secured section 35(1) in the Canadian Constitution 1982. We need similar collective action to get Aboriginal Title recognized.

A lot has changed since the 1980s.

The Delgamuukw case judicially recognized Aboriginal Title in 1997. The World Trade Organization and the North America Free Trade Agreement recognized that Canada’s policy not to recognize Aboriginal Title was a subsidy to Canada’s resource industries. The British Columbia government now has to report Aboriginal Title as a contingent liability in their annual balance sheet. And the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples despite the fact that Canada voted against the Declaration.

Our real problem is that the federal and provincial governments do not want to recognize Aboriginal Title because it ousts their jurisdiction over our Aboriginal Title territory. They want to continue to mutually and exclusively make all decisions regarding our land. Everything comes from the natural wealth of our land. We need to unite, not around our weakest positions in negotiations, but around the strongest defenders of our land. In British Columbia, participating under the BCTC over the last 16 years has had dismal results: it has produced only the Tsawwassen and Maa-nulth Final Agreements, plus the rebuked Common Table Report and the rejected BC Recognition and Reconciliation Act.

Introduced in the spring of 2009, the proposed BC Recognition and Reconciliation Act was originally praised by the BC First Nation Leadership Council, a grouping of the Union of British Colombia Indian Chiefs (UBCIC), the First Nations Summit representing those involved in the BCTC process, and the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations. The proposed Act did not recognize Aboriginal Title, and for this reason was rejected by the BC All Chiefs Assembly in August 2009. All the Recognition Act recognized was that Crown Title also existed where Aboriginal Title existed. It would have been nothing more than a Bill of Sale for the BC government. The Chiefs and People saw through it and rejected provincial legislation resoundingly.

The term “recognition” was manipulated by the province just like “self-government” has been manipulated by the federal government. I remember my late father George Manuel really struggled to develop the term “self-government” when he was president of the Union of British Colombia Indian Chiefs. But after the federal government came up with their “self- government” policy, he rejected the term “self-government” because weasel word doctors at the Department of Indian Affairs totally undermined what self-government meant from my father’s perspective.

The province had me in the same boat: I have been fighting for recognition of Aboriginal Title, but I too was forced to fight against the “recognition” offered by the province under the Recognition and Reconciliation Act. This can be confusing because fighting for “recognition” sometimes requires us to fight against words that favour the status quo at our expense. Any definition or term must be decided by us and not the federal and provincial governments.

Indigenous Peoples must realize that these circumstances require us to have strong leadership. We need to assert our Aboriginal and Treaty Rights and not demand money for more programs and services. We need a fundamental change from the existing Aboriginal Land Policies and a National Treaty Policy. We need to take action before the 2010 Winter Olympics against Canada’s Human Rights Record. Our lack of opportunity and our impoverishment are directly related to the fact that Canada does not recognize our Aboriginal and Treaty Rights. Recognition of Aboriginal and Treaty Rights is a fundamental aspect of our Human Rights as Indigenous Peoples.

We cannot support the 2010 Winter Olympics unless Canada adopts and implements the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. First Nations that have agreed to allow the 2010 Winter Olympic Torch through their territory should seriously reconsider that decision in view of how Canada is playing sports with our Human Rights as Indigenous Peoples. Canada will be using any endorsements by First Nations at the international level to polish its image, and to persuade people that Canada’s Indigenous Peoples still support the government despite the fact that Canada voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

We need to be strong. The 2010 Winter Olympics and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a direct link that connects Canada’s human rights record at the international level. Canada will not change its mind unless we insist, through band council resolutions, not to support the Torch Relay, and to engage in direct action. We must stand up for change. We cannot let Prime Minister Harper play political hockey with our human rights.

Arthur Manuel is the spokesperson of the Indigenous Network on Economies and Trade.

George Manuel.Parliament

Greenwashing at the Games

dawn — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 06:19:22 +0000

Heavy polluters look lighter as Olympic sponsors

VANCOUVER—As the debate about global warming heated up on the road to climate talks in Copenhagen, companies with investments in Alberta’s tar sands were scrambling to clean up their image as dirty oil producers.

Sponsoring the 2010 Olympics—frequently proclaiming themselves the "Green Games"—has become a convenient branding tool for companies profiting from the increasingly controversial tar sands, according to a University of Toronto professor who has written several books on the Olympics.

“Big corporations can milk that green image, and they have an excellent venue to do so with the Games because there is so much world attention,” said Professor Emeritus Helen Lenskyj.

Petro-Canada, which recently merged with Suncor to create a tar sands giant, is one of only six national partners sponsoring the Games. After expressing interest in an interview, Petro-Canada spokesperson Dany Laferriere refused to answer questions from The Dominion about his company’s Olympic sponsorship.

Becoming a national partner cost Petro-Canada $62.5 million, but there is a payoff, according to Lenskyj. “I think companies have a fair amount of success in greenwashing, with light green corporate environmentalism,” she told The Dominion in a phone interview.

Companies such as Petro-Canada need all the greenwashing they can get. The Alberta tar sands has the highest carbon footprint of any commercial oil project on the planet, according a recent report written by award-winning business reporter Andrew Nikiforuk. If the world’s largest energy project continues on its current growth path, the tar sands alone will produce more greenhouse gas emissions than Ireland, Austria or Portugal by 2020.

“Petro-Canada has been involved with the Olympics for a long time, before it merged with Suncor,” said Harjap Grewal, a member of the Olympics Resistance Network. Petro-Canada sponsored the 1988 torch relay for the Calgary Winter Games.

The Lubicon Cree, an Indigenous nation still fighting for a Treaty recognition, protested the 1988 torch relay with a campaign called “Shame the Flame,” accusing Petro-Canada of stealing their land rights and resources, according to Lenskyj.

Today, Native rights activist Mike Mercredi accuses companies such as Suncor of committing a “slow industrial genocide” by poisoning the water supply of Fort Chipewyan, a native community downstream from the tar sands.

“Around 11 million liters of toxic chemicals, including carcinogens and other deadly poisons, are leaking into groundwater and the Athabasca and poisoning entire communities,” said a Greenpeace representative in a press release.

In 1988, Lubicon protesters and their allies were banned from Olympic venues and public spaces at the University of Calgary after protesting Petro-Canada. A similar scenario may occur in Vancouver, where the University of British Columbia is taking a prominent role in the Games, to the chagrin of some student activists.

The Royal Bank of Canada, another national Olympic partner, is the prime financier of the tar sands. Canada’s largest bank directly funds fossil fuel extraction with $15.9 billion per year, creating 198 million tonnes of climate changing carbon dioxide emissions, according to a 2008 report from Rainforest Action Network.

Promoters of the "Green Games" are not talking about the tar sands, however. The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC) touts that some rain water from Richmond’s ice-skating rink, a prime venue, will be pumped into the building’s toilets and that waste wood from constructing the Whistler Creekside development will be chipped and reused on site.

“Organizers trot out a list of simple things [that seem green] for people who don’t know the difference between dark green and light green environmentalism,” said Lenskyj.

“The Vancouver Winter Games will be featuring more than just Gold, Silver and Bronze in 2010. Green will also be very much part of the mix,” explains General Motors, another national Olympic partner, on its website. The auto giant promises that 30 per cent of its Olympic fleet will be hybrids.

But activists have the power to turn Olympic greenwashing on its head, according to Grewal.

“Most of the world is aware that the development model practiced by these companies is causing the climate crisis,” he said. “The fact that they are pretending to be green gives activists a chance to highlight their actual policies.”

Chris Arsenault is the author of Blowback: A Canadian History of Agent Orange. He is currently writing a history of sabotage in the oil patch.

Greenwashing at the Games - tar sands

Embedded at the Olympics

dawn — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:06:35 +0000

Media's sponsorship of 2010 compromises coverage, begs alternatives

MONTREAL—The announcement came nearly five years to the day before the 2010 Olympics: CTV and Rogers had won the bid to be the official Olympic broadcasters in Canada for both the 2010 and 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The broadcasting deal offered up a Canadian record of $153 million for the rights, including $90 million alone for the exclusive broadcast rights for the 2010 Vancouver games. That was an increase of 221 per cent on what CBC paid to broadcast the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics and marks the first time the bid for the Winter Olympics bested the bid for the Summer Games.

Four years later, in Spring 2009, CTV/Rogers would be joined by La Presse, Canwest Global regional newspapers and The Globe and Mail as the official Francophone, regional and national media partners, respectively, of the Olympic Games.

Together, these five media outlets, which cover the vast majority of the Canadian media landscape, have a vested interest in how the Olympics are perceived, and how many people tune in or read.

“It sort of undermines any kind of journalistic independence or any claim to journalistic independence,” Mike Gasher, chair of the journalism department at Concordia University in Montreal, told The Dominion. “It's like when Quebecor [which owns Star Academie] covers Star Academie: you know there's a sort of official endorsement and I think that 'officialness' makes a big difference.”

Gasher emphasized it's unlikely that coverage is dictated by a direct order; in most news organizations, sports and news coverage will remain independent. But he warns that there could still be unconscious implications for coverage: “Most journalists would say, 'No, no, no, that's not gonna affect me,' and it probably wouldn't on any sort of conscious level, but I think on a more unconscious level, clearly you know that your newspaper is implicated in this event in some way, and it's probably going to show up [in coverage].”

Interview requests to the CTV/Rogers consortium and The Globe and Mail went unanswered. In a press release announcing their partnership with the 2010 Olympic Games, though, Globe publisher Philip Crawley stated, “As always, The Globe and Mail will do its utmost to deliver insightful, balanced and in-depth news through the stories that matter most to Canadians coast-to-coast."

Chris Shaw, author of Five Ring Circus and member of the Olympic Resistance Network, is no fan of the Olympic Games. While he admits this taints how he interprets Olympics coverage, he believes that very few in the mainstream media are making an effort to cover the Olympics in a serious way.

“It's really been kind of a 90 per cent to 10 per cent split. The 90 per cent being really bad, non-critical coverage, and the 10 per cent being some fairly decent coverage.”

For Shaw, that 90 per cent doesn't lie simply with official sponsors, but extends to other mainstream TV and news outlets, including English CBC, which was runner-up in the bid for the Olympic broadcast rights. “By and large CBC's opinion has been see no evil, hear no evil,” he says. “Other stations like Global are far more likely to be critical, but they aren't anti-Olympics by any measure.”

Charlie Smith, of Vancouver's alt-weekly Georgia Straight, sees things as a little less black and white. He argues media has done their job uncovering stories such as cost overruns, city deficits, and legislation that could further criminalize homelessness, but has failed to provide adequate context.

“I think that certain things have been introduced because of the Olympics, but have not been linked to Olympics,” Smith told The Dominion.

Smith points to the expansion of the Vancouver Police Department as one example. “It's gobbling a larger and larger share of the budget and leaving less to be distributed elsewhere. The expansion began about 5 years ago [in 2004, the year after Vancouver was granted the Games]."

“That might be one place where the mainstream media has not done a thorough job of contextualizing.”

But oft-lacking analysis in the mainstream media doesn't mean that there will be no critical media coverage of the 2010 Olympics.

Shaw believes that international journalists coming to Vancouver to cover the games won't hesitate to report on protests or on the immense poverty and homelessness among the residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. When the International Herald Tribune or the London Daily Times begin to run stories on these issues, he says, Canadian media will have no choice but to follow, or risk embarrassment.

There are also independent journalists coming to Vancouver with the express goal of ensuring coverage of the social impacts of the games.

“We are less interested in covering Olympics themselves than the effects, and covering what is happening in the streets. Paid media will be interested in the sports and games, while we'll be trying to fill the void on covering social issues,” says Franklin Lopez, who is helping to organize independent media coverage of the Games.

Online and new media, such as video, photo and audio posts to various sites including the Vancouver Media Coop, will play a critical role in such a project.

But while there will be alternative media coverage, the resources at the mainstream press' disposal and the sheer amount of coverage they will provide—CTV will be airing 22 hours of Olympics coverage per day on its national affiliates—mean they will certainly capture the bulk of the audience.

And as long as media outlets continue to fly the Olympic flag, people will be right to raise questions.

“If the whole point of journalism is to give sort of objective, independent, non-partisan account of events, then it really casts doubt because the media are partisans, officially,” says Gasher. “It's the same issue as embedded journalists with the military. It does raise questions about what kind of compromises are in play, whether they're conscious or unconscious.”

Tim McSorley is the Media Analysis Editor at The Dominion.

Embedded media

Torch Ignites Resistance

Tim McSorley — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:27:17 +0000

Opposition to Olympic Torch spreads across Canada

KITCHENER-WATERLOO—Emerging from the October 2007 Indigenous Peoples gathering in Sonora, Mexico, was a call out for an anti-Olympics convergence in Vancouver in 2010, to coincide with the opening days of the Vancouver-Whistler Olympics. In February 2009, the Olympics Resistance Network (ORN) in British Columbia issued a statement: Solidarity and Unity in Opposing the 2010 Olympics.

The call was heard in Ontario, and since then resistance to the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in the province has drawn attention to ongoing local colonialism and environmental destruction. Actions undertaken by anti-poverty, Indigenous and solidarity activists have highlighted how the Olympics impact the gentrification of Vancouver and Whistler, the destruction of native lands, and the criminalization of activists—all also occurring in communities across Ontario.

The Olympic torch is to arrive in Ontario on December 12, 2009, after departing from Victoria, BC, on October 30.

In August 2009, headlines were made when residents of Six Nations, in Southern Ontario, started debating the torch relay’s intrusion into their territory. In October 2008, protests followed the Canadian Pacific Olympic Spirit Train through Ontario (including a rail blockade outside of Toronto). In March 2009, activists disrupted the Royal Bank Torch Relay press conference in Toronto and directly confronted the then-Assembly of First Nations chief, Phil Fontaine. In October 2009, the Olympic Resistance Network-Ontario (ORN-O) released a statement calling for autonomous actions to disrupt the torch relay.

Wherever groups have organized against the Olympics, activists have been targeted by policing and intelligence agencies who have visited and interrogated people at their homes and workplaces, and in some cases even pulled them out of university classrooms.

One of these activists is Melissa Elliot, a founding member of Young Onkwehonwe United (YOU) and one of the individuals who confronted Fontaine this past spring. Elliot has been central in the debate about the torch relay at Six Nations, where youth are organizing to stop the torch passing through their territory. They have echoed the slogan that unites much of the Olympic resistance movement nationwide: “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land.”

Elliot says that at Six Nations, “We have land rights and we have treaties that are nation-to-nation.” She emphasizes that the torch relay compromises their assertion of sovereignty: “They’re not coming to us under the Two Row Wampum and asking if they can cross our territory.” She continued, “They are going through band council and asking if it can pass through our Canadian municipality—we’re not a Canadian municipality, we are a nation.”

In Stratford, 100 kilometres northwest of Six Nations, the annual, six-month-long Shakespeare Festival has been targeted by Stratford Action for Equality (SAFE). Comparisons are drawn to the Olympics by showing how the festival committee is an instigator and propagator of local gentrification, which targets low- and no-income communities, and of neoliberal exploitation of art and culture.

While attempts to convince City Hall to block the torch from coming through Stratford have been rejected, SAFE continues to conduct rallies and small actions directed against the city and Olympic sponsors. These actions have ignited debates around gentrification in Stratford and Julian Ichim, one of SAFE’s core organizers, draws connections between his own community and the 2010 Olympics. “Stratford is a town based on tourism,” says Ichim. “We have a lot of social cleansing [...] removing specific undesirable elements to create the image of the town being perfect. And the reality of the situation is that what is happening in BC is happening in Stratford [...] so we have a direct interest and a direct tie to what is going on.”

Elliot and Ichim both think that one major benefit of working on the No 2010 campaign is that it has created new energy for direct action and change in their respective communities despite the negative police and media attention that has been focused on anti-Olympics organizers across the country. Elliot adds that the No 2010 campaign has played a big role in the recent trend towards political engagement and mobilization among youth from Six Nations.

Elliot and Ichim are both also excited about the positive impacts Olympics organizing has made on the activist community in Southern Ontario. Ichim says that anti-Olympics organizing in Stratford has helped to “take things to the next level...It has revealed the inefficacy of the democratic process, it has exposed the city and has exposed the liberals who claim to be the friends of poor people, it has exposed all the hypocrisy.”

Ichim and Elliot both stressed that solidarity between native and non-native activists has been one of the campaign’s strengths. Ichim says, “The Olympics are imperial in nature. In Canada the issue is that the Olympics are taking place on stolen Native land.” For him this equates simply: “As settlers we have to take a stand...while some people think that it is an issue of the past, it is still today stolen land.”

For Elliot, one of the reasons she is enthusiastic about the campaign against the torch relay and the Olympics is that, “We’re all working together, and that is very powerful: non-natives and natives working together, that is a huge step forward in healing.”

Alex Hundert is a founding member of AW@L and the KW Community Centre for Social Justice (kwccsj) in Kitchener. He is a co-host of AW@L Radio on 100.3 SoundFm, and the Rabble Podcast Network.

Dan Kellar is an organizer with AW@L. He recently completed a master’s degree focusing on the application of environmental impact assessment legislation to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Torch Ignites Resistance