The new Vancouver City Council has called a Feb. 22 vote to gauge popular views on the city's potential involvement in the 2010 Winter Olympics. In a December statement, the B.C. Provincial Executive of the Communist Party of Canada welcomed the decision to hold the plebiscite on the city's Olympic bid, going on the say:
Such a vote should have been held before the former NPA City Council made legally binding commitments to support the bid, but the fact that citizens are finally being consulted is a genuine victory for democracy.
The Communist Party will take part in discussions leading up to the plebiscite, both directly and through the participation of our members. Like many others, we look forward to the release of the official bid book, which may help reveal the real costs and potential benefits of holding the Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler.
As the backers of the Bid point out, the investment of public funds into the Olympics facilities and related infrastructure will create jobs and some other long-term benefits. Given the depressed state of the provincial economy, many working class British Columbians see the Olympics as an opportunity to generate employment and create a legacy for the future. Some progressive civic politicians are using this opportunity to negotiate related investments in transit, social housing and other potential benefits for the city. The Communist Party understands and respects the position of those in the labour and people's movements who support the Olympic bid on this basis.
Yet it took a huge public outcry and the election of a City Council committed to openness and democracy before the Bid Committee began to act in a more transparent manner. Even now, the Bid Committee, the provincial government and many sections of the corporate media continue to obscure the full facts about this controversial issue. The real question is whether the potential benefits will be worth the proposed investment of public funds.
The evidence available to date leads our Party to believe that most of the claims about the potential benefits are greatly exaggerated, while the actual costs have been understated.
For instance, Premier Campbell and the Vancouver?Whistler Olympic Bid Corporation have said the Games will cost only $600 million while generating big profits. But this crucial claim is wildly misleading, even according to right-wing analysts like Vaughn Palmer of the Vancouver Sun.
The actual costs of staging the Games total over $6 billion, including: $34 million for the Bid process, $500 million for a new Convention centre in Vancouver, $1.7 billion to widen the Sea to Sky highway, $1.3 billion for staging the Games, $2 billion for transit investments which are considered necessary, plus security, which cost $560 million for the Salt Lake City games. Other expenses will include compensation to the Whistler ski resort for "disruption" of its operations.
The Convention Centre, the highway widening, and transit improvements would have to be paid anyway, according to the bid supporters, who argue that those expenses should not be counted. Yet the same groups want to include the employment generated from these projects as part of the benefits from the Games.
Most studies have found that previous Olympics left huge public debts for dubious long-term economic benefits. For example, the Calgary games (1988) claimed a profit of $90-150 million, but only by excluding subsidies totalling about $460 million from federal, provincial and municipal governments for Olympic venues.
Premier Campbell has said that the Olympics will create 228,000 jobs. But the study from which he quotes predicts 228,000 worker-years of employment over 30 years, the equivalent of 8,000 full-time jobs, boosting provincial employment by just four-tenths of one per cent.
Other claims about long-term benefits are equally suspect. The sites of most recent Olympics have seen little increase in tourism, for example. In reality, those who stand to gain the most are corporate interests such as the big TV networks and real estate developers.
What angers many British Columbians is that this bid for the 2010 Games coincides with a brutal attack on public sector spending by the provincial government. The same politicians who argue that B.C. cannot afford to fund schools, hospitals, day cares, low-income housing and women's shelters want to spend taxpayers' dollars on the Winter Games. The Liberals say that improving the Sea to Sky highway is a "safety issue," yet they refuse to provide more funds for seismic upgrading of schools in the Lower Mainland, risking the lives of thousands of students should a major earthquake hit the area.
Like most others in our province, the Communist Party strongly supports expanded public participation in sports and recreation. We are in favour of using public funds for improved sports facilities at all levels.
But we simply cannot agree that our federal, provincial and municipal governments should spend billions of dollars on the 2010 Winter Olympics at this time. Governments should use these funds to restore the cuts to health care, education and social assistance, to invest in social housing, affordable mass transit, and alternative energy sources, and to help create a sustainable, value-added forestry sector. Such investments would do far more to create jobs and save the environment than holding the Winter Olympics.
For all these reasons, the B.C. Executive of the Communist Party will campaign for a "no" vote on February 22. We urge all citizens of Vancouver and B.C. to take part in this debate, which we regard as an important step towards more meaningful public involvement in decision-making in our province.
This article taken from the PEOPLE'S VOICE - Issue of January 1-31/2003
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