Olympics as 'Five Ring Circus'
Chris Shaw, critic, author and now council candidate, on why the games are 'a corporate scam.'
'$6 billion party'
- Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games
- New Society Publishers (2008)
First the news: Christopher Shaw, the outspoken critic of bringing the 2010 Winter Olympics to British Columbia, is running for Vancouver City Council. He will campaign for the November 2008 municipal vote with the Work Less Party, supporting environmental activist Betty Krawczyk's bid to be mayor.
Meanwhile, the neuroscientist and University of B.C. professor Shaw is promoting Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, a book that grew out of his work as a founder and lead spokesperson for the No Games 2010 Coalition and 2010 Watch.
Released in June, Shaw said the book's first run of 5,000 copies is selling well enough that New Society Publishers is already planning a second printing. It is a companion piece to a documentary Work Less Party founder Conrad Schmidt released in 2007.
"We will take [the book and film] forward into the civic election in a big way," said Shaw. The election is an opportunity, he said, "To force a lot of red pill moments on Vancouver's citizens and think about what this thing is really all about."
While he said he doesn't expect the Work Less Party to win, members will have some fun and may be surprisingly competitive with Vision Vancouver and Non-Partisan Association candidates for mayor. "We're pretty confident we can paint Gregor Robertson and Peter Ladner as kissing cousins if not twins. That leaves really one choice, which is to vote for grandma [Betty], if you don't believe in that kind of stuff."
The Tyee recently talked with Shaw about the new book by phone while he was home in Vancouver between trips to Ecuador and Hong Kong.
You raise the question in the book of whether the games are cool, a corporate scam or both. At this point how would you answer?
"It's a corporate scam. It is the slickest financial scam I've ever heard of. It's basically a Nigerian banking scam multiplied by a million. It's very, very well done. At the local level it is built by developers for real estate development. At the national level, it's built for television marketing. The two sides talk together and they sell you this thing that's supposed to be Mother Theresa and Wonderbread all rolled into one. It's a very slick machine and it's got 50 years of saturation advertising backing it up. Most of us grow up thinking the Olympics are an unalloyed thing of good and it's very hard to break that conditioning."
People are starting to see how the games are being outsourced, with much of the tax money spent on them leaving the province. What do you make of that?
"They're getting outsourced, that's for sure. The jobs and a lot of the money... I don't think you should be surprised at all. I think it was always a bit of a misrepresentation to suggest all the jobs would stay here in B.C. or even in Canada. Certainly the money doesn't stay here or in Canada.
"That's what you're going to get under this kind of liberalized trade regime. Why wouldn't they under NAFTA? You remember how it was sold, though. It was one more of those things they used during the plebiscite period and even before that to get people onside. It was all going to be about jobs for British Columbians, it was all going to be about art, it was all going to be about the greenest games ever. That's typical. It's not atypical for how they sell a bid."
Are there patterns to how the games are sold to host cities?
"They have a playbook I'm sure they hand out to cities. We know bid cities study each other, the ones in the past that worked and the ones that didn't. They know for sure what sort of things resonate with the public and they try to hit all those notes, the fact that they're rarely true notwithstanding.... They get away with it because in most cities people haven't been exposed to the stuff before.... All the happy rhetoric is rarely accurate."
You mentioned people in Tromsoe, Norway, which is bidding for the 2018 Winter Olympics, are learning from Vancouver. How so?
"The people in Tromsoe until recently didn't know what was happening in Vancouver until they realized there was an opposition. Their opposition group there was kind of beleaguered and didn't know quite what to believe because the Tromsoe organizers are saying, 'Look, Vancouver's the perfect example of how everything goes right and everything is on time and on budget and nary a tree came down.' And you have to actually sit these people down and say, 'Actually none of that's true.' And so actually the opposition there now has a fighting chance to actually combat the circus."
Obviously some people are making money. Who makes money on the Games?
"Jack Poole, David Podmore and Li Ka-Shing and all the developers. They make a bag of money on the games. They do really, really well.
"I don't know if you've followed the Millennium athletes' village thing, but they're going to make a bag of money.... They're going to make, a conservative estimate would be $500 million, probably make more than that, probably make a billion. For essentially no risk. It's the sweetheart real estate deal of all time. How they pulled it off is a very interesting question... You and I could have put this deal together. If we had the right connections.
"There should be some serious hard scrutiny on this. I'm not suggesting any badness is happening, it's just you'd think with a project of this nature where Vancouver's reputation is sort of on the line, and you don't want things going south on this, and Olympic scandals are far too well known, you'd want to have this be as clean as you can. To have the secrecy surrounding it is just weird."
In B.C., the organizers seem reluctant to answer even some basic questions about the games. Why would that be?
"They default as bid organizations do into a culture of secrecy. They can't stand scrutiny because they make a lot of decisions behind closed doors and they get caught in these outright falsehoods. The best example I can think of, besides this Millennium nonsense, is security costs. They've been holding to this $175 million BS from the get go.
"What we realize from the [RCMP] documents is they've spent most of the $175 million already and we aren't anywhere near 2010. Which doesn't even begin to add up what the army's going to spend and what the other police are going to spend.
"They came up with a low-ball number they thought the public would buy and they ran with it. It's now becoming obvious that number was silly and it's probably going to be 10 times more and what are you going to do? Now you've got the Games coming and you've got to defend it and they'll spend what they have to spend. It's not coming out of VANOC's pocket. They don't care.
"Then they get squirrelly because they don't want to answer questions, because if you ask them that question they surely don't want to have to deal with it."
In the book you talk about the "journalism lite" that surrounds the Olympics. What do you mean by that?
"Most of the media want to put a happy face on it. It's understandable from the corporate perspective that that would be true.... We saw it from almost all the print media, we saw it from most of the radio and TV. English CBC was awful, just ghastly. In terms of Olympic boosterism, they were probably the worst offender of all. I suspect it had a lot to do with their high hopes for being the ones getting the broadcast rights. They didn't."
"At the time they thought they had a lock on it because they'd run the broadcasting for previous Games. They have Beijing, so they just assumed they were going to get it. They weren't going to bite the hand they hoped would feed them.
"They didn't even do the balance thing of 10 good things to one negative thing. They just ignored stuff they didn't like. We chased them for months trying to get any kind of coverage at all from CBC, the fact there even was an opposition. It was absurd."
Are reporters not taking a closer look as the Games approach?
"The media goes through different phases. Before the bid was one phase. Now everyone's being a little more critical because the numbers don't add up and the promises clearly are falling by the wayside.
"Then there's the third phase when you get closer to the games and you get nothing but glowing reports and they'll all default into the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat kind of stuff. A year from now you won't hear the slightest negative thing. It would take Jack Poole killing somebody on his staff to get into the media. And then they'd probably find a happy way to make that sound good.
"Afterwards, who cares? It's come, it's gone, the money's spent and the financial hangover's set in and Eagleridge is still gone, so now what? Why harp on negative things when you can't do anything about them. The circus has moved on, they didn't pay any taxes, they scooted out of town and it sucks to be us."
How big a financial hangover do you predict?
"The number we came up with is pretty close to what Vaughn Palmer pegged in 2002. About $6 billion. And that's what we know.... In public money you get about $6 billion. If you add the private sector contribution it pushes it closer to $7 billion."
"If it was a totally privately financed bid, that would be a different thing. It's not. It's massively publicly financed... The province, by signing the host city agreement, has basically issued an unsecured line of credit. So if it costs $6 billion, that's one thing. If it costs $20 billion, they're going to pay it.... You've just given your credit card to the guy on the corner. You better hope he's okay."
What kind of scrutiny is needed?
"Scrutiny is hard to do as a private citizen. To really get to the bottom of the costs and what's going on here, you'd need Sheila Fraser's office at the federal level and whomever the auditor general in British Columbia is at this level to be doing this full time. And they're not, so we're never going to know, ever.
"It gets really murky really quickly. You could make your best guesses and make your assumptions and you're going to get a low ball figure at the very best. That's what we're dealing with. No one will ever know what the Olympic Games cost. It goes to transparency in government. It goes to accountability of government. It goes to, in a massive way, lost opportunities and priorities."
What does making hosting the games such a priority say about us?
"What kind of society puts its priorities on having a party and making a few people wealthy and leaves how many people homeless in Vancouver? 3,000? 4,000? Imagine if instead of having the 17-day party, you decided to cure six of the worst diseases in the world. You could have done that. $6 billion is not the only thing that would deal with poverty in the city, but it would go a long way to providing resources.
"The list is endless. What kind of society spends money on a party when it needs to deal with other urgent issues of somewhat more import than how many of our athletes are standing on the podium getting their trinkets?"
What would be a better source of national pride?
"I derive my sense of [national pride] from the things our society does for its less fortunate, and I'm just not seeing that happening in Vancouver. I find it difficult to have a lot of pride in what this city and this country's been doing about something as scandalous as having a Downtown Eastside exist in a major, rich city. I find it very difficult to have a lot of pride in that. We talk about sharing our city in the mountains with the world. Well, we're also going to share the poverty we have here with the world. The image we project around the world is not going to be as glowing as the 'our time to shine' bumper stickers would have us believe."
How much do you think the Games will be used to show the world what's really going on here?
"The idea the Olympics are apolitical is nonsense. They're always political since their inception.... The Chinese are trying to use the Olympics as a showcase for their country as the superpower of the 21st century.... The Tibetan protesters are trying to raise awareness of Tibetan sovereignty and religious rights and they're absolutely right to do so.
"By the same token, the APC and DERA and Pivot should be doing everything they can to bring the world's spotlight onto the issue of poverty in Canada and the condition of aboriginal communities in Canada. It's perfectly acceptable and legitimate."
How do you communicate the criticism to ordinary people?
"I guess by writing a book and making a movie. Conrad Schmidt made a documentary of the book. That's the best way to get the message out there.... You are pushing up hill against mainstream media that have all the resources in the world. Whatever number of people read the book or see the movie, a thousand times more are going to watch the Olympics on TV and see the happy spin.
"Having said that, there's more traction maybe in other cities like Tromsoe where people are starting to question the bid before it's come. There's a lot more success in that regard. That's the place you stop the games.
In the book you say the Olympics are a wedge issue to look at issues around globalism and capitalism. How so?
"The Olympics doesn't operate in a vacuum. The IOC's really the ultimate and most successful corporate parasite out there.
"It forces people to think about for whose benefit things happen. You can look at what an IMF loan does for a third world country and ask much the same question of what does the Olympics coming to Vancouver do for an average Vancouverite or British Columbian. Pretty much the same sort of story. It's basically shaking the money out of your pockets into theirs."
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
- 'The Kids Are All Right'
- 'Leave Your Shoes On'
- Glaciers, BC Hydro's Melting 'Batteries'
- Frankie Rose Makes Life Tougher for Journalists
- Becoming the Ethical Hunter
- Too Much Energy Used to Mine, Move Bitumen Says BC Firm
- Three Ryan Gosling Pickup Techniques that Don't Work in Real Life
- Shadow Workers of the World, Revolt!
- Could SOPA Pervade Canadian Copyright Law?
- Would You Buy a Used Car from These Libs?
- Shadow Workers of the World, Revolt!
- Bill Rees' Last Lecture
- Economist Calls Gateway Pipeline an Inflationary 'Threat'
- Too Much Energy Used to Mine, Move Bitumen Says BC Firm
- Is Canada Ignoring Signs of a Coming Economic Collapse?
- Harper in China
- How First Nations Are Gearing Up for Legal Battle Against Gateway
- Eleven Oily Questions for Every MP
- Remembering Lloyd Dykk's Wit, Generosity and Superb Prose
- BC Child Care Advocates in Geneva to Complain to UN
- BC, You Love You
- Shadow Workers of the World, Revolt!
- Who Pays Huge Power Bills for Clark's Gas Plants?
- Make It the Canadian Webcasting Corporation
- Harper in China
- When the Prize Is a Chance to Toil on BC's Farms
- Three Ryan Gosling Pickup Techniques that Don't Work in Real Life
- Would You Buy a Used Car from These Libs?
- Time to Zip John Baird's Loose Lips
- Foreign Trade Zones Eyed for Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Prince George
30
Login or register to post comments
Fiat lux
3 years ago
He's correct. The people of
He's correct. The people of BC will be paying for this racket for generations, first for the infrastructure, then for the maintenance .
The Olympics have been a racket for many years and by a curious twist, became professional showbiz under the Soviets and satellites, who were the first to pay big salaries to competitors for propaganda purposes.
Then came the first known drug scandals, also originating behind the Iron Curtain, with athletes pumped full of performance enhancing drugs, women turned into men and many killed, before testing was introduced.
The Western countries have known about this for a long time, but did nothing.
We were living in England in the early '50s and I managed to get hold of the payrates and phoney employment records of the Hungarian team before the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, and sent it to the British Olympic Commission.
They thanked and assured me that they knew all about it, but didn't want to rattle anything, not to upset the chances for international cooperation, or something similar BS.
In short, it was always a political racket and with this total commercialization became even worse, with the public paying through the nose for nothing.
Ed Deak.
alive
3 years ago
Expo all over
People did not learn anything from expo-86, all they remember is the fireworks and mass of people trying to get on skytrain before it closed for the night.
The people who were evicted were ignored and the rest of us just had to put up with the many inconveniences, in the name of putting Vancouver on the map.
As far as I can tell all we accomplished was to start the influx of people who could afford to buy the houses from under our noses ----big deal!
This time out we will also end up paying for the party, I sure hope the yahooos are satisfied.
bpither1
3 years ago
Their Rhetoric leaves me cold
A circus it is but the bread isn't free. And it's not too difficult to find out how we are paying for all this. Minimum wage which hasn't changed in 6 years. The worse child poverty statistics and the worse day care access in the country. A provincial government which trashed social housing in October, 2001 but only seems to embrace it again since we will be greatly embarrassed as "the best place on earth" when the hordes of tourists have to put up with panhandling and homelessness in February.
Jeffrey J.
3 years ago
Another Tyee Scoop
What an interview! This is the most genuine, thought provoking news article I've read in months. Like the Tyee's previous coverage of the Basi-Virk trial and other bombshells, THIS is what journalism is about. Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing real journalism!!
SharingIsGood
3 years ago
Nice interview!
Well done, Andrew MacLeod!
I think I'll buy the book.
ray blessin
3 years ago
Luge?
$50,000,000, for a concrete ditch for some yahoos to ride down in sleds? Wait, a year ago the cost for the ditch went to $100,000,000. Who knows what it is now and what it will be in 2010?
Ray Blessin
Kamloops
greengreen
3 years ago
USED
I have often wondered, do the athletes ever feel "used" in all of this? After all, they are unpaid performers, creating a spectacle worth billions.
Frank
3 years ago
Olympics
I assume the Liberals will be bringing all these foreigners into the province in ways that don't require CO2 emissions?
Sailboats?
G West
3 years ago
No Worries Frank
Under the Campbell Tax (Carbon Tax) Regulations the fuel of cruise ships (and airliners) is exempt from the tax.....they can put all the folks they want on cruise ships and park 'em anywhere...after they've arrived (Campbell Tax untouched) at YVR.
funniously
3 years ago
boohoo
So what? I like watching international athletic competitions, and like many other Canadians, I'm willing to pay extra to have one held in my country.
happy
3 years ago
Agreed funniously
So when Team Canada hits the ice in 2010 I trust all you crybabies will turn the channel to Masterpiece Theatre
SharingIsGood
3 years ago
funniously - happy to pay
Funniously wrote:
If it costs $6 Billion dollars and the province is left on the hook for $4.5 billion after all of the payouts by media etc., that is roughly $1500 on average per adult British Columbian. The tax brackets that my wife and I find ourselves in will probably mean at least tripple that cost to us - 9 or 10 grand! Personally, I'd rather use the money to help some children (mine included) through the university degrees that have more than doubled in cost under this government. I'd rather spend it on a good deal more than this circus. I'd like to put it to good solid infrastructure (green power and sewers and light rail systems). A $6 billion dollar party - what a sad joke Campbell has played on his people!
And Happy, I'll probably watch it on the TV. I won't be guilted out by being called a hypocrit. After all, I certainly will have helped pay for the bloody thing. If my wife and I can manage to find 9 hours for watching, that'll be $1000 bucks an hour + popcorn for the show.
happy
3 years ago
You forget SIG...
Don't blame it all on Gordo. Who started BC on the Olympic train? Hmmm? Care to comment?
SharingIsGood
3 years ago
Happy
I don't know for sure who started the Olympic bid; it could have been the NDP. If it were the NDP, I don't believe they would have done things the same way. I believe they would have kept the train, and improved its ability to take passengers in and out of Whistler - not built a highway to a playground for the rich. I don't think the NDP would have built an unnecessary and expensive subway just to securely handle 3 weeks worth of travellers. (Is the subway even counted in the $6,ooo,ooo,ooo+ over-run?) I also don't think they would have put the skating centre sheet of ice on that terrible piece of ground where it now sits and sinks. I think the NDP may have lost the bid: the IOC would have wanted too much.
Regardless of who formulated the first proposal, I am not impressed with Campbell's handling of it. CEO Campbell and Companies' handling of it has cost us billions, and caused much homelessness and grief. Campbell has been claiming all the glory; he and his apologists can't blame the over-runs and poor management on anyone but themselves. He could have/should have nixed the Olympic bid, withdrew the bid, had he been the "fiscally responsible" premier he claimed he would be when he got elected.
I don't live in Vancouver, I would never have been for it had I been told it would cost anywhere near $2 billion, let alone $6 billion. Regardless of who proposed it, Campbell has failed to do his job as CEO. He's still not coming clean on the costs. Where is the "most open government" he promised? He and his secretive corporate cronies just go about dividing up the province between themselves.
2010 Winter Olympics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Winter_Olympics
happy
3 years ago
Not could have been the NDP
WAS the NDP. Most of your post is simplistic, incorrect and ridiculous.
Sorry, but the train would not cut it. Your highway to the playground of the rich? Nobody I know is what I consider rich, but I know lots of working stiffs like myself who can ski at Whistler if they want. You don't have to be a millionaire. And you may want to ask the residents of Sqaumish, Pemberton, etc. if they consider highway upgrades that were on the books DECADES before the Olympics were awarded what they think. I grew up in the area. It's was called the KILLER Highway when I was a kid.
happy
3 years ago
Part 2
Now the subway. Three weeks of travellers. Right. After that no one will use it eh SIG. Are you aware the line to the Airport is just a spur line, the main route runs into downtown Richmond. And never mind YVR handles 17 million travellers a year, I guess only Olympic visitors will use it.
The Skating Oval. Richmond residents don't seem to have a problem with it, especially after the town council sold surrounding lands for big bucks, BECAUSE of the oval.
One last mistake before I go. BC is not footing the entire bill by any means. The taxpayers of Canada have chipped in big time, just like Calgary and Montreal. Ta ta
G West
3 years ago
happy
Well, all I have to say is that, if this turkey lays a rotten financial egg (and I think it will when all the costs are in) and the bills rival the ones that Athens and Turin are now trying to pay off, I certainly won't hesitate to remind all you sports fans about it.
And no, I certainly won't be spending one thin dime on the Campbell circus - any more than I did the Bennett blow out in '86.
And further, anyone who brings up Montreal in support of the 'Olympic' experience really IS desperate.
As for the ‘subway’ – I’m kind of looking forward to the class-action suit against THAT paragon of promise-keeping.
And, if Jack Poole wanted the Olympics ('cause he sure ain’t NDP) - he should have paid for them - not the public.
JIm
3 years ago
"THIS is what journalism is
"THIS is what journalism is about."
What's that? Finding the person who fits your ideological view of the world, then giving them a platform to regurgitate their rhetoric.
SharingIsGood
3 years ago
secrecy re: 2010 funding
Here's the way it is Happy:
On secrecy:
http://www.straight.com/article-141228/olympic-records-go-missing
Speedskating oval:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Olympic_Oval
On using the train:
If they had improved the rail journey and increased the # of trips to and from Whistler, then residents of the Whistler area and skiers from Vancouver could have used public transportation for the commute and quit driving their SUVs. We are trying to go green are we not?
If you want more of the same, Happy, I am sure I can dig it up.
Maurice Cardinal
3 years ago
Solution?
Everyone knows the problem, but unless you have a solution, talking about it is just more hot air designed to stir animosity that precipitates violence.
Protesting the Olympics is an exercise in futility. The IOC has very successfully managed street protest for a long time and they know exactly how to keep Vancouver under their thumb.
2010 is a done deal and you're going to pay for it whether you like it or not. The time to protest was before the plebiscite. Toronto didn't lose the bid. Residents prevented the IOC from ravaging their community. Vancouver obviously wasn't so smart, and neither was Montreal.
Protesting at this late stage only drives up taxes and negatively impacts the reputation of our community and your livelihoods.
Olympic protest always eventually turns violent, and someone has to pay for the anti-riot squads.
Here's what I wrote about Chris Shaw and traditional protest way back in 2006.
If Shaw simply hates all aspects of the Olympics then he is simply wrong. At its core the Olympics is a good event, unfortunately though it has become profit-centric as opposed to sport-centric. We no longer have to kill the horse just because it has a broken leg. It's a new era and we have new tools. It is now possible to take back the community in a manner similar to how consumers put the music industry on notice. MP3 knocked major record companies to their knees, and we can do the same thing here, in a similar way, to the IOC. You can read more about Shaw and his plans to protest here.
There is a modern day solution that puts violent street protest where it belongs - in history books alongside the gas burning automobile.
Quit talking and follow the money.
funniously
3 years ago
Oi, taxpayers!
Paying for new infrastructure, including athletic facilities and transportation systems, is what we do. What difference does it make whether these things are built for the Olympics or not? The Games were just a rally cry for getting them done sooner.
PS: Full props to all Canadian lugers, speed skaters, bobsledders, ski jumpers and others who's winter sports don't get enough respect or support.
Maurice Cardinal
3 years ago
Funniously
The difference Funny, is that it costs three times and sometimes more to build the facilities and infrastructures under a tight and unforgiving Olympic schedule.
Have you ever asked a supplier to put a RUSH on it? They love it when they have you bent over a time constraint.
The Olympics is a tool for lazy politicians and greedy developers.
Read this . . . Hidden Olympic Costs
funniously
3 years ago
Mostly labour anyway
The lion's share of any project's cost is labour. So what if BC construction workers get a winfall? They'll spend most of those earnings locally on other goods and services.
Maurice Cardinal
3 years ago
No argument Funniously
You might have an argument F if construction workers were paid fair wages in this province.
Most make just enough to survive in a city that is now so expensive to live in that it takes the average homeowner almost 80% of their wages just to cover their mortgage or rent. It happens like this in ALL Olympics regions in the free world, and then the bubble bursts. Unfortunately when house prices spiral down, as they are now doing, taxes keep rising to pay for exorbitantly overpriced Olympic construction costs.
Haven't you seen the reports that BC workers are the lowest paid in Canada relative to the cost of living?
Didn't you read The Tyee article about contractors shipping construction workers in from South America and only the paying them what amounts to slave wages?
Many of the workers on Olympic projects are imported and will return as soon as the projects are finished and the jobs dry up, which has already started in 2008.
They are imported so contractors can force wages down for workers across the board. So to which windfall exactly are you referring?
RBC Economics recently, and finally reported in The Sun that;
Don't you find it odd and a bit of a Catch22 that families are leaving Vancouver in droves because they can't afford to live here, and now that fuel prices have increased they can't afford the drive from the burbs either.
You have no argument Funniously, but I understand why you're confused.
You have to shake yourself loose from mainstream media and think more independently. At the very least read between the lines.
zalm
3 years ago
Happy
You started off so well pointing out to SIG that Glen Clark started the Oly bid. If only you'd gone on to say that under the NDP it is likely that there would have been a megaproject highway to Whistler anyway because Highway Constructors Limited and Blair Redlin would have still had a job finding work for big labour under the NDP, especially with Burnaby NDP-MLA Fred Randall of IUOE 115 pulling all the levers that Tony Tennessy told him to.
Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any more appropriate a job than your following excuse. The fact is that highway upgrades are made to improve transportation options for business first and commuters second. This is as true under Friedmanism as it is under any other form of economics. To build such an expensive highway for commuters and skiers only is not only economically foolhardy, but politically bankrupt. There was nothing wrong with that highway that appropriate driving wouldn't correct - the old highway was better than the road into most of the resorts in Tirol and such jet-set places as Val d'Isere and Chamonix.
I lived in West Van for more than twenty years and drove that highway myself hundreds of times, often for no better reason than something to do. You can't tell me that the Killer highway" (a name which was attributed to it only in the 1990s by news media, not earlier as you suggest, and not at all by engineering professionals) is inherently unsafe if you've ever driven Highway 37, or Highway 16 to Rupert, or Highway 1 out of Rogers pass or the Yellowhead east of Valemount at night.
Expecting Squamish and Pemberton to be bedroom suburbs for Vancouver is as stupid an idea as making Richmond a high density city behind its primitive dykes and unstable soil. The GVRD rightly restricted Richmond's growth and denied it entirely in East Richmond. Yet Richmond town council decided to ignore advise, go against the recommendations of its insurers and allow maximal build-out, thus requiring all the other citizens of the GVRD to pay additional taxes to provide it with water, sewer, electrical upgrades, additional road networks, more extensive dyking and access to the provincial emergency reconstruction program in the event of a 1-in-100-year flood breahes the dykes. Selfish and stupid.
zalm
3 years ago
Part II
Squamish wants to end its reliance on the sawmill industry and become a bedroom of Vancouver? Whistler wants better access for its residents? Why don't Squamish and Whistler pay for the highway? There's no business up there to support it with their taxes like the other highways the government has spent good money upgrading. None. No sawmills carrying logs to market, no paper mills trucking rolls of paper to the world, no high-tech manufacturing or oil industry rigs or factories or shipbuilding or anything else. Nothing but a little tourism that would still be there no matter HOW you travelled to it.
All there is, is a little real estate development potential, which was NEVER a good reason for building a superhighway. And that potential is about to end, with the coming decline in housing prices as the boomers age and dispose of their property, and as oil costs continue to skyrocket, making transit, food, health care and education more costly, and business less profitable. And never mind the weak US dollar. That's already been largely factored in as Whistler's tourism dropped over the past couple of years.
The new Squamish highway was a sow's ear and always will be. Don't mark my words - mark those of the people who know.
http://www.discovery.org/a/3361
zalm
3 years ago
And...
I'd like to stop picking on Happy, but there were so many idiocies in the course of just a few paragraphs... I'm sorry, I can't resist. Couldn't some of you other brainless boosters had let fly with some of these stinkers? Didja have to put Hap up there in front to take all the bullets?
Richmond sold existing public lands to pay for this oval - something no other jurisdiction in the GVRD has done for many years unless it was for public goods such as schools, hospitals or roads. They sold public lands in a bulk sale for less than they would have gotten if they were able to sell off small parcels over time, and sold them before they were ready to develop them; they sold more than they intended due to higher construction costs, and are now stuck with a looming bill of more than $50 million over the next half-dozen years to service this property with water, sewer, roads and fire protection, with no additional money coming in to pay for it. Engineering in Richmond has been in a fury for the past couple of years over this.
I'd like to know the reason Olga Ilich decided not to run again - I don't wonder if this didn't have something to do with it.
No, BC is not footing the whole bill, but they are footing more than $7 billion of the bill, while the Canadian taxpayers are footing $350 million - maybe. I know math is hard, but....hell, you advertised you were going to make one more mistake before you went, so I guess I can't complain about your honesty.
This is very old ground, and your straw man arguments are as bogus as the ones everyone else already put forward. This $2 billion "investment" moves NOT ONE ADDITIONAL PERSON than before 2005 when it was first made a condition of the Olympic proposal by Gordo, because all its riders will be transferred to it from the BUS, requiring additional transfers and more time. This while the number of cars will increase by 40,000 in the GVRD up to 2010. When you're ready to listen to facts instead of your own closed mind singing a lullaby, let us know.
zalm
3 years ago
Oi! funniously!
Agreed - we pay for infrastructure. But what you mean by getting "these things" done sooner is puzzling. There was NEVER any call in BC to build a speedskating oval, never mind one that won't be used after the Olympics because it's sagging. The Canadian Olympic Committee simply won't fund two ovals in the West. Ontario will get one before BC gets one thin dime to operate theirs.
There was NEVER any call to build a luge track. Or athlete's housing. And I'm not at all sure about the larger media centre/convention centre - the spin from the hotels industry (which has been running at 88% occupancy for more than 20 years now) has never made any sense to me.
What we did need was MORE HOCKEY RINKS so our kids don't have to practice at 4:00 am. What did we get? Two FEWER rinks at UBC and minor upgrades to existing ones elsewhere.
What we did need MORE EFFECTIVE and MORE FREQUENT TRANSPORTATION everywhere, including up the valley. What did we get? A toy train that will carry less than 2% of the total commuters on the road in the morning rush hour from only one municipality.
What we did need was MORE AFFORDABLE HOUSING in the city. What did we get? 250 units of housing that the City will make a profit on, that will probably be rented at market rates to those who can afford them. The going rate for 900-sq.ft. 2-bedrooms is $1800 a month in desirable neighbourhoods, which means that families desiring to live there would need an income of $5100 a month to live there, based on standard bank calculations. That's more than I make!
http://davideby.blogspot.com/2008/03/vanoc-issues-social-sustainability.html
The curling rink? Arguable. I don't really know much about the popularity of the sport in Vancouver. But heaven help me, I can't think of ANY other part of the Oilympic "legacy" that we really needed. And especially NOT more than $1 billion in "security" spending. That's simply a black hole with no redeeming societal value whatsoever.
ME2
3 years ago
Excuse me while I go puke.
Maybe I'm just getting old. I read above that we'll be spending at least $6 billion on the Olympics for Vancouver. We'll be spending $50, maybe $100 million for a luge track.
And then I see a story alongside which reads :
Mining outlook bright
Mining projects totalling more than $1.5 billion are slated for development in north-central B.C. over the next two or three years and are expected to pay economic dividends for the region in jobs and spending, according to the area chairman of the Canadian Mining Institute.
"The money is astounding -- it's good," Greg Rasmussen said Thursday.
SIX BILLION for a circus which will last for three weeks, while other people rejoice over a lousy $1.5 billion spread over 2-3 years to be spent in their region.
Is this government of ours the sober-sided, perspicacious businessmen they told us they would be after being elected? Yes, you say? Then how come they don't appear to have any idea of what one BILLION dollars - let alone SIX - actually represents? Oh well, what's a billion or two between friends, eh?
They'd be horrified about investing that public money in something that would return some value, but have no qualms about spending it on a spectacle to put Campbell's face before the world.
Never, not even in their wildest dreams, could anyone accuse the NDP of waste on such a scale.
stevebailey
3 years ago
I hate to say I told you so!
Great interview, Andrew. And Christopher, your analysis is spot on. The fools that govern us swept us along - well, most of us anyway - never me and many other citizens concerned with the economic and social welfare of our province.
This corporate uber-strategy and government boondoggle beats anything we've seen before. It's a homegrown BC disaster smacking of greed and opportunism - full of sound and fury and signifying nothing but the hastening decline of our province.