The Dominion - 2010 Olympics

Grounds for Disruption

Moira Peters — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:58:17 +0000

Tent cities evolve to bring politics out of—and permanence into—the housing debate

VANCOUVER—On the anniversary of the 2010 Olympics, a second tent city will disrupt Vancouver. Like the Olympic Tent Village that occupied 58 West Hastings in the Downtown East Side one year ago, this incarnation may only last a few weeks. However, discussions have been initiated within Vancouver Action (VANACT), the primary group organizing the tent city, about evolving this tent city into a more permanent project, mirroring such tent cities as those in and around Seattle, Washington State.

"[Last year] we thought it would last a week, but by the end of the week there was a community meeting where individuals decided to stay until people got housing,” said Tristan Markle of VANACT. Markle was involved in last year’s tent village, and hopes to carry those lessons into this year’s project.

“Learning from that experience, we have to be prepared and anticipate that the people who need a liberated space might want to stay as long as necessary,” he said. Those who stayed and squatted 58 West Hastings eventually helped secure low-income housing for 35 residents of Olympic Tent Village.

When it was occupied one year ago, 58 West Hastings was an empty lot that the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) had leased from condo developer Concord Pacific with the intention of using the space for Olympics-related parking. This year’s tent village is expected to occupy a space in the now desolate and bankrupt Olympic Village, which has come to symbolize both the misplaced financial extravagance of the Games, and the city’s failure to follow through with its Olympic promise of more low-income homes.

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Across the border in Seattle, one finds a history of tent cities that have survived in various forms for over a decade. In the late 1990s, Tent City 1, and then Tent City 2, were created illegally to address the growing numbers of homeless people in the King County region of Washington State. Both were opposed by local government and eventually shut down, but the dire need for such an establishment had been made visible.

Tent City 3 was created in 2000, but it was not until March of 2002 that its legality was made clear following a court ordered “Consent Degree” between the organizers and the city attorney. This “Consent Degree” established basic rules and a system of temporary locations on offered private land. Tent City 3 continues to provide shelter for approximately 100 people.

Partly in response to some of the limitations of this legal yet controlled encampment, Tent City 4 was created in May of 2004, with the intent of defying the “Consent Decree” by occupying public spaces and using public resources. It eventually transitioned from using public spaces into a system of staying on properties owned by faith-based organizations, such as parking lots. This project also continues to operate, with a population fluctuating between 50 to 100 people.

More recently, a separate project to provide shelter for the growing numbers of homeless people was created in the University District of Seattle. It was coined “Nickelsville” in response to then-Mayor Greg Nickel’s use of police to clear out homeless encampments, and specifically an edict issued by the mayor on April 4, 2008, that outlawed setting up shelter on city property such as overpasses, greenways and parks. The original location of Nickelsville was at 7115 West Marginal Way SW in Seattle, and was built in the early morning of September 22, 2008. This encampment only lasted four days, until police entered, arresting 23 people and removing the installed shelters.

Nickelsville stumbled through a few more locations before it found a more stable home in the private parking lot of the University Christian Church in the University District, a space made more secure due in part to great support by the local faith-based communities. This began a string of temporary locations for Nickelsville, sometimes moving to areas of King County outside Seattle.

Nickelsville built a list of rules that are largely self-enforced. No drugs, alcohol or criminal activity is tolerated within the tent city; any offenders risk immediate eviction. The entry point to the tent city is carefully monitored with an official check-in table. Many tenants take on roles such as security and “moving boss” to help ensure respect for the rules and oversee getting everyone packed between locations.

By August 2010, Nickelsville was back in the space it had occupied nearly two years prior, at the University Congregational United Church of Christ. While some locals were happy to have the tent city back, others recalled increased break-ins and other associated criminal activity. Church groups intended to mitigate the motivations for increased local crime by helping provide Nickelsville tenants with access to bathrooms, showers and other facilities. Nevertheless, wherever the tent city went, there was often local resistance to Nickelsville sharing the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood agitation, combined with a growing need for shelter, contributed to the push by organizers to re-envision Nickelsville as a more stable project with a permanent location.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn formed a citizen review panel in October 2010 to explore solutions to the growing problem of homelessness. It recommended the creation of a permanent tent city location. Such an initiative has been strongly supported by the organizers and tenants of Nickelsville, and is listed as a demand in a recent declaration endorsed by several of the organizations deeply involved with the tent city. Nickelsville presently occupies an old Lake City Fire Station, north of the University District—a location that provides warmth during the winter months. While this site continues to provide shelter for approximately 100 people, the community hopes a permanent location could accommodate up to 1,000 tenants.

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The size of Nickelsville, and its long history, can be attributed to both Seattle’s large homeless population and also a well-organized network of citizen support.

A homelessness count performed in Seattle in the early hours of January 28, 2011, found 1,753 people in Seattle and 2,442 people in the greater King County area on the streets between 2:00 am and 5:00 am, while more than 6,000 others took advantage of available emergency shelters and other accommodation. Currently, Seattle has nearly 2,000 shelter beds and more than 3,000 in the King County region in total.

In contrast, Vancouver’s 2010 count found 811 people on the street and an additional 765 in shelters. Both Seattle and Vancouver are faced with dramatically increasing rates of homelessness.

“One study shows Vancouver to be the most unaffordable city in the world,” said Markle. “And one year after the Olympics, homelessness has tripled.”

Similar stories are told in Seattle. On January 10, 2011, at a community meeting on homelessness, Ruth Blaw, director of the Orion youth shelter, which is run under the umbrella organization Youthcare, explained that the organization had seen the use of its services double in the past 18 months, and they are no longer able to provide beds to meet demand.

The meeting was part of the University District Conversation on Homelessness, which convenes monthly at a local church or faith-based community center. Updates are provided on the most recent political news affecting homeless individuals, and representatives from local churches, synagogues, mosques and other groups meet to help form a unified face in tackling ongoing issues around homelessness.

The tent cities in King County have been able to depend on the support of such groups for logistics. The groups also play a crucial role in pushing back against government reluctance to make serious commitments. In 2007, under the pressure of these groups, the state government introduced Bill HB 2244, which prevented city governments from stopping churches from hosting tent cities, or setting a time limit of less than 90 days on the stay of individuals within the encampments.

A younger initiative, Vancouver’s tent city movement has involvement from its own faith-based community. One of the major support pillars of the Olympic Tent Village was Streams of Justice, a Christian social justice movement.

Dave Diewert of Streams of Justice offered a lucid description of the social mechanics behind the Olympic Tent Village in the second edition of Village Voice, the newsletter of the tent city. He explained that the political component of the Olympic tent village was a kind of “eruption,” a disruption of the status quo. This eruption “crosses lines of legality and illegality of who owns this space and who occupies this space...eruptions of those structures become opportunities to say something strong. The point is for this action to bring into light in a powerful way...the reality of homelessness, gentrification, and the criminalization of poverty.”

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Markle sees the upcoming tent city as a similar eruption, explaining that one of its most direct intentions is “to bring the issues out into the open, rather than having them brushed under the carpet or hidden out of sight, so that people are forced to confront the issues.”

A similar phenomena was taking place in the early tent cities of Seattle, with illegal occupations in response to an acute housing crisis. However, Seattle’s tent cit[ies] gradually evolved, accruing stability. Nickelsville’s goal of providing shelter for 1,000 people demonstrates how the focus has shifted to providing a steady base for a many homeless people as possible.

The example of Nickelsville reveals an inverse relationship between permanence and visibility with respect to the issue of homelessness: as permanent shelter needs are met, political visibility goes down.

On the one end, tent cities that mark a large public event—such as the Olympic Tent Village and the tent city created in Allen Gardens during the G20 summit in Toronto, which lasted for just one night—act, according to Markle, as “political manifestation[s] that bring the politics [of homelessness] into the open.”

In the middle, more permanent establishments such as Tent City 1 and Tent City 2 in Seattle, while being illegal “eruptions,” also provide longer-term shelter. The state sanctions, or at least tolerates, tent cities that shift from one site to another approximately every three months, but their continual change of location, and all of the associated hurdles, help maintain public awareness of the ongoing need for housing solutions.

At the other end of the spectrum, tent cities with a permanent location and properly established facilities begin to blur the line between quasi-legal occupations and traditional homeless shelters. As Markle explained, forcing people into small shelters or scattered spaces throughout a city means that the problem of homelessness “doesn’t appear to be a political issue.” Similarly, once a tent city is located in a more permanent location, often in a low-income area far from an urban centre, it is effectively “out of sight and out of mind” for many city dwellers. However, Markle is clear to point out that “shelters are [important] emergency stop gap measures until real housing [can be acquired].”

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The eruptive tent city is also “an affirmation of community” which may carry though to later incarnations, according to Diewert. The establishment of a tent city represents a refusal of citizens to “sit around and wait for the state, nor to give it opportunities to act and set the framework within which...action can take place, but rather for the community to say ‘we can do this’ and to take initiative.”

This perspective is echoed in the opinions of others. “The main point of a tent city is an exercise in self sustainability, self-organization, and community-building,” said Yifan Li of VANACT, who also helped build last year’s Olympic Tent Village. In a similar vein, Markle said the “hope is that the tent city is a solidarity action between folks who live in the inner city and allies city-wide.”

The strength of this solidarity will perhaps dictate the resilience and longevity of Vancouver’s newest tent city.

“Once a space is liberated...people will take advantage of that liberated space and create a community there, but one has to be prepared to support it as long as possible,” said Markle.

Whether Vancouver's upcoming tent city is the starting point of such a venture will depend on what unfolds in the ensuing weeks.

Zander Winther is a recent graduate of the Philosophy MA program at the University of Waterloo, and currently feels at home in both Vancouver and Seattle.

Tent City Crowd

Tent City Tents

Recovering from the Heart Attack

Moira Peters — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 05:31:10 +0000

Arrestees fighting off Olympic side-effects in court

VANCOUVER—Although the Olympics' closing ceremonies were three months ago, for those who opposed the two-week spectacle, the Vancouver 2010 Games have not yet left town.

Guillaume Pascal was arrested and accused of involvement in the February 13 Heart Attack Demonstration. "Two cops say that I instructed people to smash the windows of the RBC [Royal Bank of Canada]," he said. "VPD [Vancouver Police Department] said that they caught the ringleader of the action when they arrested me."

The Heart Attack was a demonstration meant to clog the roads leading through Vancouver to Whistler where many of the sports events were taking place. 300 masked people walked through downtown Vancouver, vandalizing symbols of the Olympics and capitalism. Olympic sponsors' advertisements on city buses were spray-painted; newspaper boxes of the Province and Canwest newspapers were overturned and the windows of the Hudson's Bay Company were smashed. The group was dispersed finally by riot police in the West End.

Pascal was arrested two days after the Heart Attack demonstration, after his residence and vehicle were constantly monitored by the police.

"VISU [Vancouver Integrated Security Unit] really dropped the ball on keeping the peace," said Pascal, who believes he was arrested because security agencies needed to save face after property was damaged during the Heart Attack. "They spent eight times the amount [on security] as the Quebec City Summit of the Americas, and needed a scapegoat for their incompetence in letting the Heart Attack take place."

"The Heart Attack ended the violent protests, and that had a lot to do with the response of the police," said Deputy Chief Constable Steve Sweeney at a March 17 Olympic security debriefing. "The public came over to our favour," he said about support for police conduct during the Heart Attack.

But few saw footage of police conduct during the February 13 demo. Police were brutal in arresting protesters, and even detained people peacefully walking to a prison vigil later that day.

"There were no charges made against me," said Sozan Savehilaghi, who marched with a pink-wigged, coverall-wearing group calling itself the Olympic Cleanup Crew. She was detained for video-taping arrests during the Heart Attack. "I was never read my rights or told why I was being detained. There were just lots of empty threats."

Savehilaghi was one of 27 protesters arrested during the Olympics, according to Solidarity with Anti-Olympic Convergence Arrestees (SACA)—a group formed to bring together arrestees and supporters to raise funds for the formers' defence. Ten of the arrestees were charged, of whom two are still fighting charges in court.

SACA member Ed Durgan was arrested February 13 near Pigeon Park, fifteen blocks away from where the Heart Attack demo ended. He was arrested for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk after questioning a group of police, whom he believed were harassing someone sleeping on a bench near the park.

"I was nearly deported. We had to fight for me to stay since they were going to revoke my student visa," said Durgan. "They put effort into intimidating me because I was a high-profile activist. But [the detainees] realized we'd all been arrested for political purposes, and wanted to stick together and fight these charges." Durgan said SACA goes beyond fundraising, and is considering legal action against the police for harassment.

Fundraising for SACA is tricky in Vancouver, where recently a benefit rock gig at the Pitt Pub at the University of British Columbia (UBC) was cancelled by the Alma Mater Society (AMS).

"AMS is claiming that the policy is that only student groups can book events on-campus," said SACA organizer Alissa Westergard-Thorpe, "which makes no sense because off-campus groups"—such as the Red Cross and Vancouver General Hospital—"work with student groups to book space at UBC all the time."

Despite UBC AMS' actions, there is support for SACA. The launch of the Dominion's G20 special issue on May 14 at the Vancouver Media Co-op included a solidarity statement with SACA. A dance party at the Secret Location on the same night included a silent auction for SACA.

Pascal's case is still going through court. "And there are other things like finding a job, that is hard after this," he said. "Marginalizing someone into being a 'terrorist' stops him from ever being able to live normally."

Isaac K. Oommen is a freelance journalist and communications graduate student researching media representation of marginalized people. He is a collective member of the Vancouver Media Co-op.

Olympic Cleanup Crew

Main & Hastings Cop Shop

Olympics Sidelines Youth

Moira Peters — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:22:21 +0000

Understanding wider impacts of the Games

OTTAWA—The Winter Olympics have come and gone, and Vancouver is left to take stock of the lasting effects of having hosted this global mega-sporting event. As decisions are made about the fate of social housing in the Athlete’s Village, and as the last of the Red Tents are taken down, Vancouver might consider what the Olympics has meant for one of its most marginalized populations—homeless and street-involved youth.

Young people who watch the Olympics are expected to benefit from the Games, according to sociologist J.J. MacAloon in This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games. MacAloon says youth ought to relate to the athletes, who are themselves young adults, and be inspired by the example of these fine role models. Go to any Olympic host city organizing committee’s website, and you will encounter special games, educational activities, and interactive content geared directly at youth. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recently taken its focus on youth a step further with the introduction of the Youth Olympics, whose inaugural event is to be held in Singapore in August 2010. Its stated goal is to “inspire youth around the world to embrace, embody and express the Olympic values of Excellence, Friendship and Respect.”

Vancouver is the capital city of the province with the highest child poverty rate in Canada. So, consideration might have been given to the effects the Games would have on these young people. Whatever the Olympics has meant for Canadian youth overall, the Games' effects on Vancouver’s homeless and street-involved youth are not so rosy. The Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) failed to meet approximately half the commitments outlined in their Inner-City Inclusivity Statement, according to the Interim Report Card compiled by the Impacts on Community Coalition. VANOC used these commitments to promote their bid and recruit wider support in Vancouver for hosting the Olympics. One such failure, according to the Report Card, was of VANOC’s commitment to protect inner-city housing and shelters. The Report Card points out that homelessness has more than doubled since Vancouver won the Olympic bid, and at the same time, between 1,085 and 1,580 units of low-income housing were lost in the inner city alone. The majority of housing losses occurred as a result of the transformation of Single Residence Occupancy (SRO) hotels into condominiums. According to a report by Pivot Legal Society, low-income housing loss in this period is a direct result of real estate speculation pressures generated by the Olympic Games.

A report by the Social Policy and Research Council of BC indicates BC Employment and Assistance Rates (i.e., Employment Insurance and welfare) remain far below a living income, particularly in an expensive city like Vancouver.

These factors, albeit not all related to the Olympics, combine to exacerbate homeless and street-involved youths’ difficulties surviving in Vancouver.

“You don’t know what it is to live on welfare until you’ve lived on welfare. It’s awful. Especially in BC. You can’t even live off welfare and have a place unless you have housing [provided], which is impossible,” said Sarah*, a young woman living in a youth homeless shelter in Vancouver.

The irony, of course, is that the Olympics are touted—especially at the bidding stage—as an event that will make things better for the inhabitants of host cities.

But Helen Lenskyj, in her book Olympic Industry Resistance, points out that Olympic host cities face a multitude of negative effects, particularly in relation to affordable housing and homelessness. Sara pointed out, “Not only are they making condos to try and shove their problem under the carpet but they’re deciding that oh, if they make some place and get [homeless people] off the street [the city will] look good... But actually [now that] the Olympics is done those places [temporary shelters] are coming down and new buildings, which people are going to pay for, are coming up and the homeless people are right back where they were.”

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions published an extensive report in 2007 about housing and the Olympics. Their research suggests that Olympic Games “are often catalysts for redevelopment entailing massive displacements and reductions in low cost and social housing stock.” They also note the common use of legislation “to allow for speedy expropriations of property or to criminalize homelessness.”

In BC, the provincial government passed a controversial Assistance to Shelter Act less than three months before the Vancouver Olympic Games began. The act gave the police new powers to move homeless people off the streets and into shelters. Advocates for homeless people dubbed the law the “Olympic kidnapping act.”

Such policies are consistent with global efforts to market cities to tourists and potential investors, according to E.J. McCann’s 2009 article, “City Marketing.” These strategies include “the constant policing and management of the city itself, so that its public spaces—and even its people—or at least those who are on public view in spaces likely to be traversed by tourists or business people—correspond to and enhance the brand.”

This happened with particular intensity—according to a number of homeless and street-involved youth who witnessed police activity—during the year leading up to the Games. In particular, homeless youth found themselves increasingly moved from downtown tourist streets such as Granville or Robson.

“There are certain neighbourhoods [the police] won't let you in, but in the West End, if they find you in one place? They'll be checking it every night after that for about a month,” said Curtis, a young Aboriginal man living in a youth homeless shelter. The Downtown East Side—an area notorious for open drug use, sex trade work and poverty— was the only neighbourhood these young people felt was free from police harassment in the year before the Olympics.

“They don't care if you're down there. They'll come up to me while I've been using drugs and they're like, we don't care that you're using. Just stay out of sight,” said Jennifer, a formerly homeless woman who continues to attend the youth drop-ins at her local homeless shelter.

The pressure to get off downtown streets meant that some youth had trouble accessing the services clustered around the West end of the city, including youth shelters such as Covenant House and Directions. It also meant they were pushed into areas of the city where they faced increased risks of drug involvement or crime.

“The East Side is the worst because you can get caught up in anything out there. We don't want to do that. That's why a lot of us come out to this area,” said Michael, a street-involved youth currently living in a shelter in the West End.

During the Games themselves, scrutiny by police seemed to ease. “The worst of the bad effects didn’t materialize,” noted Am Johal of the Impacts on Community Coalition (IOCC), “largely because of civil society pressure on government.” Pressure tactics included volunteer training offered by Pivot Legal Society and the BC Civil Liberties Association for Vancouver residents to monitor police, and an ongoing campaign against Olympic-induced displacement by the Carnegie Community Action Project.

Despite these efforts, homeless and street-involved youth still encountered the police during the Olympics, particularly if the young people were perceived to be out of place. Justine, a young Aboriginal woman who had recently secured social housing in Vancouver’s affluent West end, relayed a conversation she had with police during the Games: “[I was] just walking down the street, like [the police said] ‘You don’t look like you’re from around here.’ And it’s like, ‘I just live down the street actually.’ And they’re like, ‘Are you sure, what’s your name, what’s your address?’ and like interrogating me when I walk down the street just because you don’t look like you belong in the area.”

Homeless and street-involved youth also noticed police treated other young people differently during the Games, particularly if they were obviously Olympic revellers. “If you’re wearing Canada gear, you can be as hammered as you want and the cops won’t bother you, as long as you’re going, ‘Go, Canada!’” said Jason, a young man currently housed in Vancouver’s east side. This injustice rankled Jason and other youth, particularly given that they experience regular police harassment for relatively minor infringements.

As cities gear up for future Olympic Games—London 2012, Sochi 2014, Rio 2016—and as Toronto begins to prepare in earnest for the arrival of another mega-sporting event (the 2015 PanAm Games), it will be important to assess the effects on people from all walks of life, including low-income and homeless youth. These young people live in a city in a way most people don’t. Athletes, tourists, international media, and police and security forces will be stomping through the bedrooms and living rooms of street-involved and homeless youth when they descend on a host city. If the Olympics are marketed as the purview of the young, then young people ought to be the true beneficiaries, rather than the victims, of the Games.

*All names used in this story are pseudonyms.

Jackie Kennelly is an assistant professor at Carleton University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, currently studying the effects of the Olympics in Vancouver and London on low-income young people.

Street Youth & the Olymics

Fear: An Olympic Legacy

Moira Peters — Fri, 28 May 2010 05:21:09 +0000

How the security apparatus rules our world

Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better
Matt Hern
New Star Books: Vancouver, 2007

ROME, ITALY—East Vancouver author Matt Hern wasn’t talking about Vancouver’s 2010 Olympic Games when he penned Watch Yourself: Why Safer Isn’t Always Better several years ago, but he may as well have been.

Indeed, the book should have been required reading for each security agency linked to the three levels of government as it contemplated delivering a “safe and secure” Winter Olympics without descending into total security hysteria. Alas, the book never made the must-read list of the Integrated Security Unit (ISU), the organization created by the RCMP to coordinate Games security.

The ISU’s mandate, at least as they understood it, was to ensure that absolutely nothing could go wrong during the Olympics and Paralympics. The ISU began by considering possible “threats” based on the evaluations of the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). ITAC identified three key concerns: foreign-inspired terrorism, crime, and domestic protests—and pretty much in that order. However, long before the Games had arrived, the order had shifted and the fear of protest became paramount. Vocal critics of the Olympics found themselves followed, monitored, surveilled, visited, and, in more than a few cases, intimidated and threatened by undercover ISU agents.

In the end, nearly $1 billion was spent on Games security; thousands of police from across the country patrolled Vancouver and thousands more soldiers patrolled cold, wet, mountain slopes. Close-circuit cameras (CCTV) in the downtown core monitored people 24 hours a day and the city and province passed egregious laws that violated our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And despite all of this, the authorities could not, or chose not to prevent the breaking of a few Hudson’s Bay windows during the second day of the protests.

In hindsight, it all sounds ridiculous. And it was. Any half-bright ISU agent (and there were a few) or any Vancouver Police Department deputy chief could have done a more realistic assessment of the real threats and responded appropriately—and far more parsimoniously—by realizing that the assessment itself was badly overblown. The massive preparations were so over-the-top and out-of-proportion that the entire plan should have been significantly scaled back.

But nothing was scaled back. All threats were considered massive and the response even more so.

Indeed, the state of mind that sees anything and everything as a potential threat is precisely the subject of Watch Yourself. And Hern’s book taps into they ways we respond when we let fear rule our world. This mindset dictates that kids need to be safeguarded from being kids; forget protecting your child from playground equipment and strangers, we need intrusive policing and scores of cameras to keep them safe. We need constant surveillance for our own safety, and adults need to have their habits controlled for their own good too. We have become, in effect, the perfect example of the ultimate security state that is ruled, not by a dark authoritarian presence, but by our own fears. And, one might say, such fears enable and nurture the apparatus that feigns security.

Although Hern did not address the Olympic madness—the five ring circus—his book foreshadows the mentality of a security-obsessed society. “l’d say that the Olympics were a monumental exercise in total securitization,” he told me over the phone after the Vancouver Organizing Committee shut up shop and left town. “Not just the billion-dollar, multi-layered policing effort, nor the sea of CCTVs, nor the endless security guards, nor the reaction to protest, nor the bewildering array of security agencies from all over the globe...” a point well made, I thought, “but all these in combination and the willingness of our elected officials and civic leaders to mobilize a huge swath of citizens—city workers, volunteers, bus drivers, garbage collectors, the media—into a comprehensive exercise in discipline and abhorrence of anything not officially corporatized and cleansed.”

In barely a few breaths, Hern had summarized the detriments of the 2010 Winter Games and pin-pointed its greatest legacy: fear.

He continued: “The effort largely succeed[ed] in moving huge chunks of capital from the common wealth into privatized hands and continued to cleanse the city of working class, radical, alternative and affordable possibilities by insisting on a relentlessly ‘safe,’ contained, controlled, clean and tourist-slash-investor friendly ethic where nothing out of order is permitted.”

I write this from Rome, a city that is alive in ways that Vancouver may never be in spite of the aching need to feel world-class. Indeed, much of this angst drove the Olympic venture from the beginning. While we still debate the role of police in Canadian society and worry that kids might fall off the jungle gym, here in Rome kids play outside unsupervised and wander into bars with their parents while people picnic with wine in full view of the constabulary. And who could care less? The streets are filled with people day and night, drunk and sober, happy and sad. Romans have not yet let their fear blind them to the possibilities of being human—a vista that is remarkably refreshing coming from “no fun” Vancouver.

Maybe if we listened to Hern (or simply heeded our own better instincts) and accepted that some risk is the price for being human, we can escape our self-imposed state of fear, a state that is not only sterile, but also soul-destroying.

Chris Shaw is a Vancouver-based neuroscientist, academic and author. He wrote Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, published in 2008 by New Society Publishers.

For a recent example of Canada's security apparatus at work, see the Vancouver Media Co-op's latest coverage of protests and police response at the G8 University Summit in Vancouver over the weekend. Check out the Vancouver Observer's case-in-point of security using fear at these protests.

Watch Yourself

Housing Activists Reclaim Olympic Village

Tim McSorley — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:21:51 +0000

Housing activists and their supporters reclaimed Athlete's Village in a carefully planned action on the afternoon of Saturday, May 15.

The False Promises at False Creek rally disrupted the open house event, and made the demands of poor and homeless people in Vancouver impossible for investors to ignore.

Scroll down to view video.

This video report was originally published on the Vancouver Media Coop site.

Cameras: Gregor Jahn, Franklin Lopez
Editing: Franklin Lopez
Writing: Dawn Paley

You can also view more images from this action in a photo essay by Isaac Oommen.

False Creek action 2

World Cup Knock-Out

Moira Peters — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:49:19 +0000

South Africa to score big public debt in 2010

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki wrote in his country’s 2004 bid to host the 2010 World Cup: “We want to ensure that one day, historians will reflect upon the 2010 World Cup as a moment when Africa stood tall and resolutely turned the tide on poverty and conflict.” Contrary to Mbeki’s professed aim of unity and economic development, it seems the legacy of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa will be limited to a handful of multinational and national corporations making massive profits on the backs of a reserve army of labour and through the generation of massive public debt.

VANCOUVER—While Canadian protesters throughout the 2010 Winter Olympic Games organized around the call, “Homes, Not Games!”, the same slogan could be shouted at the opposite end of the world, where this year South Africa will also be hosting a sport mega-event: the 2010 soccer World Cup.

In South Africa, over 13 per cent of the population lives in makeshift housing. In 2008—the year the food, energy, and financial crises simultaneously rocked the country—the rates of makeshift housing rose.

Twenty-nine per cent of the population of South Africa cannot afford to pay for water and almost eight per cent of households use bucket toilets, an apartheid leftover that successive democratic national governments have both pledged and failed to eradicate as an issue of immediate concern. According to Eddie Cottle, Coordinator of the Campaign for Decent Work Toward and Beyond 2010 in South Africa, the amount of South African public money being spent by the government on World Cup preparations “is equivalent to the amount the state spent on housing delivery over a ten-year period.”

Around the globe, the rhetoric employed by government leaders to exalt the potential of sport mega-events bears striking similarities. On October 30, 2009, British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell announced at the Olympic Torch Relay Celebration that “the Olympics bring us together.” In South Africa, the government has announced that the World Cup is an unprecedented “unique opportunity” to build “unity and pride amongst South Africans.” Not only do South African government leaders present the World Cup as an opportunity to unite South Africans but also to unite and develop the African continent as a whole and “celebrate Africa’s humanity.”

UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon stated the South African World Cup is a “time to present a different story of the African continent, a story of peace, democracy and investment.” His statement was met by a unanimous resolution passed in the UN General Assembly to endorse the World Cup in South Africa as a “platform for social development and peace across the African continent.”

Are these mega-sporting events really opportunities to bridge divides and build unity amongst citizens within and across nations?

For a country like South Africa, which is not only adjusting to globalization, but also dealing with massive socio-economic inequalities and ideological differences around issues of gender, race, class, and culture produced by the combined legacy of colonialism and apartheid, what impact can South Africa expect from hosting the World Cup?

As Cottle points out, the costs of sport mega-event infrastructure, such as stadia, are substantially higher in countries of the Global South than countries of the Global North, where the infrastructure to host these events is already in place. On its World Cup in 1994, the US spent less than US $30 million (US $50 million today). France spent less than US $500 million in 1998, and South Korea spent US $2 billion in 2002. The South African government will be spending at least US $4.1 billion by the end of the World Cup. Since 2004, when South Africa won the bid to host the World Cup, the cost to the South African public of building the stadia (and the necessary electricity, communications, roads, parking, water and sanitation infrastructure) to host the event—the most expensive item in the public’s World Cup expenditure—increased by over 750 per cent from the original budget.

Danny Jordaan, CEO of the South African World Cup Local Organizing Committee, claims the benefits of spending this $4.1 billion in public money will trickle down to South Africans through job creation and the development of public infrastructure.

While World Cup construction has created 22,000 jobs, 70-80 per cent of these jobs are subcontracted positions typically lasting three months. Building and Wood Workers International (BWI) research uncovered construction workers working for as little as US $1 per hour. The net wages of an average construction worker in 2008 was approximately US $2 per hour.

As Maytome Tachi, a construction worker at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg notes: “the World Cup creates jobs, but not better working conditions.” Two construction workers have lost their lives at World Cup construction sites. Workers at one of the hallmark sites, Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, embarked on an 11-day strike in 2007 in part due to unsafe working conditions.

The Durban strike was not unique. Throughout South Africa, World Cup stadia have been plagued not only by poor working conditions; they have also been sites of resistance for workers and their organizations, who have organized 26 strikes throughout the country since World Cup construction began. In July 2009, 70,000 workers embarked on a national strike—the first of its kind in a fragmented sector represented by different labour organizations—to demand a 13 per cent wage increase. In the end, because of inflation rates of 10-15 per cent, the subsequent agreement of 12 per cent did not amount to a substantial increase, let alone a living wage for the average construction worker.

If workers on World Cup projects are struggling to make a living and taxpayers are footing the cost of an ever-expanding bill, who is benefiting from this massive public expenditure?

According to BWI, “construction company annual reports for 2009 indicate mega-profits being made despite the downturn taking place internationally and in the local economy.” The largest South African construction companies report before-tax profits of 58 to 142 per cent. The average CEO of such a company contracted for the World Cup earns around 245 times the income of the average construction worker.

Whereas South African construction companies have been forced to address workers’ demands to a certain extent, as Cottle notes, Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is guaranteed to make money, regardless of what happens in labour disputes. Thus, the biggest winner from South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup appears not to be a South African business or shareholder, but FIFA. The South African government passed legislation in 2006 treating FIFA and its subsidiaries “as diplomatic missions” and thereby creating a “tax-free bubble” around all their economic activities. With its tax-exempt status and before the World Cup has even begun, FIFA has already reported profits of US $3.2 billion from the 2010 World Cup– the largest profit it has ever made in pre-Cup economic activities.

While FIFA repatriates record profits from the World Cup, construction companies have secured the largest international venue to showcase their world-class stadia and thereby future opportunities for expansion. The South African public, however, will be left footing the bill for World Cup-related costs incurred even after 2010. According to Cottle, there is no way the stadia will generate enough revenue to be self-sustaining. The costs of sustaining them will therefore be offloaded onto municipalities, many of which are already cash-strapped and resorting to increasing fees for public services such as water and electricity.

As a result of its World Cup expenditures and its loss in revenue due to the world economic crisis, the South African government recently announced it is entering into deficit spending and will be borrowing over US $1 billion from international financial institutions. Meanwhile, predicting that World Cup-related travel will not reach the levels originally anticipated, FIFA’s official accommodation agent recently relinquished its rights to around half a million bed nights it had reserved at local hotels. South African corporate analysts then warned that the once-projected massive boost to the South African economy from the World Cup will be “muted.”

As public resources are diverted toward select national and transnational corporations that are profiting from the World Cup being hosted in South Africa, the very same South African public that will be indebted because of the event has had to be mobilized in support of it. Government and big business secured public support for the World Cup by promising that public revenue generated from the event would far exceed the costs of hosting it, and that over 500,000 jobs would be created. To guarantee this continued support, the South African government has spent over US$2.5 million in events to “mobilize communities and create awareness and enthusiasm for the World Cup.” And while the government mobilizes communities in the name of nation-building and “psychological readiness” for the event, it is spending close to US$100 million in security equipment and deploying a dedicated police force of 41,000 officers to contain the same public during the event.

Thus, while the government states it will “leave nothing to chance in securing the event,” it leaves the security of its citizens to chance as it bequeaths them with debt, and millions remain in need of stable housing, water, sanitation, and safe, secure jobs.

On opposite sides of the globe, 2010 in both Canada and South Africa has shown that hosting mega-sport events is actually widening the gap between rich and poor in host countries. The unifying potential of sport is ideologically employed, obscuring class tensions that these mega events in fact reproduce and exacerbate.

Rachel Elfenbein is a PhD student at SFU and Chair of the Teaching Support Staff Union. Before moving to Canada, she conducted popular education and research with civil society organizations in southern Africa. An original version of this article was published by the Vancouver Media Co-op.

SAfrica World Cup

The Tar Sands Oilympics

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:10:57 +0000

The London Tar Sands Network and London Rising Tide hold the inaugural Tar Sands Oilympics in Trafalgar Square, London.
Corporate contenders RBS, Shell and newcomer BP compete for the chance to wreak environmental havoc in their scramble for Canada's tar sands.
In the process they will lay waste to vast areas of boreal forest, poison First Nations communities and push the planet towards catastrophic climate change. The race for the most polluting fossil fuel resource on the planet is on. Forget the Winter Olympics in Canada, the real competition for the future of the planet is here.

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

Update From Olympic Tent Village

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:14:56 +0000

Organizers and residents of the Olympic Tent Village in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside give a press conference on the day after the tent city is set up.

Rally and March to Begin the Olympic Tent Village

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:43:52 +0000

Residents of a neighbourhood in Vancouver that is often referred as the countrys poorest postal code set up a tent encampment in a vacant Downtown Eastside lot to advocate for housing and to shelter the neighbourhoods homeless population.

2010 Rings Hollow

Van Ferrier — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:11:53 +0000

This documentary feature examines the history of housing in Vancouver and the impact of the 2010 Olympic Games on the city's homelessness and poverty. The film features interviews with legal experts, activists, and people affected by the housing crisis, with particular focus on hotel closures, evictions and the criminalization of dissent.

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Opening Ceremony

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:33:22 +0000

Vancouver 2010 Olympics protesters march past the Vancouver Art Gallery to BC Place where the 2010 Olympic Opening Ceremony is taking place and meet a wall of Vancouver police.

The NLG vs BC Civil Liberties

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:26:46 +0000

During today's tent city action in Vancouver the VMC caught up with Larry Hildes, an attorney for the National Lawyers Guild. We asked him why he had broken ties with BC Civil Liberties

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

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?