Angus Reid Public Opinion has released the results of a poll on Canadians’ confidence in the RCMP. It shows British Columbians’ faith in the force has “plummeted” on the eve of the 2010 Olympic Games, which the Mounties are entrusted with safeguarding. Read more…

A local 2010 Games activist called security tactics “shocking” after a six hour interrogation at the U.S. border yesterday.

“We must be doing something right if we are facing these increasing levels of reaction,” Olympics Resistance Network member Marla Renn told the Tyee. Read more…

A million-dollar Wednesday drug bust by Vancouver Police netted ecstasy pills branded with the Olympic rings. Read more…

The City of Vancouver is hunting for buildings in which to establish four or more temporary homeless shelters this winter.

"City staff are out looking at a number of sites right now," Councillor Kerry Jang told The Tyee. Read more…

Vancouver police officers won't use force to take homeless people to shelters during extreme weather, Police Chief Jim Chu said Monday. Read more…

A landlord accused of evicting tenants from her East Vancouver house to make big bucks during the Olympics said she would remove an Internet ad offering Games-time rentals. Read more…

Premier Gordon Campbell asked the first meeting of the new minister's council on tourism to use the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver as a “launch pad” to promote the province.

The council, whose membership was announced Nov. 23, had its first meeting on Nov. 30, just over two months before the Olympics begin Feb. 12. Read more…

Temperatures are forecast to plunge during the coming week, and the perceived right to sleep on B.C.'s streets could fall in lock step as the new Assistance to Shelter Act takes effect. Read more…

Neither the dire warnings nor the spectacular promises that come with hosting an Olympics can be proved, says a new study from the University of British Columbia - at least not until the gold medals have been handed out and the Games have moved on. Read more…

New changes to Vancouver’s Olympics bylaws could be used to clear homeless people from the Downtown Eastside, city councillor David Cadman worries.

“Obviously this is one of the poorest areas in town,” he told council. “My fear is that this is going to be an ability to harass people and remove them.” Read more…

The risk of a major confrontation between activists and police during the 2010 Games is higher than ever, a civil liberties advocate told the Tyee today. Read more…

A June 19 City of Vancouver communications platform said Olympic branding won't be used to hide the worst of the city.

"Where most Olympic cities sweep problems under the rug, we will not try to hide and not trying [sic] to exploit - we will try to be honest." Read more…

“The guard looked incredulous. ‘Are you telling me you aren’t going to be talking about the Olympics?’ I repeatedly asserted that I was not.

That’s high profile U.S. journalist Amy Goodman telling her story about her shakedown by Canadian border guards on her way into Vancouver. “Canada’s Olympic Crackdown” is now news viralling all over the United States and beyond. Read more…

An undercover cop watched Lower Mainland anti-Olympic torch relay protesters in the rear-view mirror on Oct. 30, according to Victoria Police chief Jamie Graham.

"You knew that the protesters weren't that organized when on the ferry on the way over they all rented a bus, they all came over on a bus, and there was a cop driving the bus!” Graham said Monday. Read more…

Pemberton's support for the Olympic Games is wearing thin.

That is the impression one takes away from a strongly-worded letter to VANOC CEO John Furlong in which Mayor Jordan Sturdy expresses severe frustration with the Olympic Organizing Committee and its alleged refusal to pay for a park and ride facility in Pemberton. Read more…

Uncle Sam is coming to watch all things American at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The United States Department of State has leased a floor in a downtown building, Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit chief Bud Mercer said Monday at the 12th Vancouver International Security Conference. Read more…

Police visits to anti-Games critics are a necessary compromise between personal freedoms and Olympics security, one of Canada's top privacy officials suggested today.

"We've understood that [security forces] have the need to establish relationships with possible dissidents," assistant privacy commissioner Chantal Bernier told the Tyee. "That is preventative work in relation to public safety." Read more…

Protest during the 2010 Games won't be led by a large group with broad appeal, a Vancouver city councillor suggested.

"To be honest, I don't see a big anti-Olympics movement," Geoff Meggs told reporters yesterday. Read more…

A prominent civil rights advocate told an Olympics forum he’d given up trying to change the hard-set plans of organizers and security planners. Then he walked out of the event altogether.

David Eby’s pessimism may not have been genuine – his departure a carefully planned stunt. But the sense of inevitability evoked by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director was one of the major themes of the evening. Read more…

Proposed changes to controversial Olympics bylaws should allay free speech concerns, Vancouver officials hope.

“The city was never intending under any scenario to kick down doors and take fridge magnets off people’s fridges,” Vision Vancouver councillor Geoff Meggs told reporters today. Read more…