Allow Me to Explain

I know I'm a Debbie Downer. I was on the fence for a long time with regards to the Olympics, but decided a while ago that I needed to make a decision. I think the reason it took so long was because I wanted so badly to have no qualms about the Olympics. I want to be excited. I think it would be so much fun to be in Vancouver and to experience the atmosphere and anticipation. I'm all for getting pumped up for sporting events. I want to celebrate Vancouver - it is a beautiful city! It's a city that we should be proud of and excited to show off to the world. I want to celebrate elite athleticism. I want to support people who work incredibly hard and excel at their sport. I want to celebrate nations from all over the world coming together to compete. It is wonderful to have such an international event in which different cultures are welcome to participate. I want to celebrate people coming together.

And I will. I will celebrate all those things.

There are many things, however, that I will not celebrate. As a friend so eloquently put it, there are three pillars of disaster: environmental, social, and economical.

Environmentally
Parts of the province (especially up near Whistler) have been destroyed as a result of Olympic venue construction. Hundreds of thousands of trees have been cut down. Also, this has been labeled the “greenest games ever”, meanwhile all the major corporate sponsors of the game have horrific environmental records. Coca Cola, for one, is well known for polluting and depleting water systems in India where they do most of their bottling. People in the communities in India are short on clean water because of Coke. The Royal Bank of Canada, for a second example, is the largest financer of the Alberta Tar Sands, the largest environmental disaster in the world. I had never heard of this, but have been informed that the tar sands cover a huge portion of Northern Alberta. What they have done is basically level a bunch of forest in order to extract crude oil. Once extracted, it takes four barrels of water to refine one barrel of this crude oil into what can be used by cars and other stuff. The tar sands have polluted a major river in Northern Alberta that many First Nations communities depend on for their water and food source and as a result, people in these communities have seen a rising level of extremely rare cancers that are killing members of their communities at very young ages. Yes, this isn’t necessarily a direct effect of the Olympics, but these sponsors are walking home with their own pretty pennies to continue on their environmental destruction.

Socially
People living in the community of the downtown Eastside have faced rising repression and harassment from the police. They have dealt with the process known as gentrification (where the poor are forced out of their living spaces so that they can be upgraded into high end condos). This has been done to “clean up” the area. People were forced out of their homes and these buildings remained empty for months leading up to the Olympics – rendering all the tenants homeless. As a result of this gentrification there has been a 300% increase in homelessness in the last 5 years – something that has never been seen in this area before. There is no affordable or low income housing available, despite numerous promises to build them. The Olympic Village, for example, was supposed to become 20% affordable/low income housing, and now there will be none. There have been massive cuts to health and education programs, yet the provincial government can cough up billions of dollars for the Olympics – which the tax payers will end up paying off. There are some more disturbing facts about our provincial government that come into play here; BC has had the highest child poverty rate in Canada for six years in a row. We have the highest cost of living in the country and the lowest minimum wage. There have been bylaw changes made to repress people’s rights to free speech, in accordance with the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) demands on the host city. There are huge human rights issues that have been disregarded for the sake of a two week party.

Economically
The tax payers will be funding these games for years. Meanwhile, the IOC will make millions and millions of tax-free dollars because they’re not registered in any country. The games are only for the rich. It’s like a big party for all the CEO’s and government officials. The Liberal government, for example, spent almost a million dollars on buying tickets for government officials and representatives. Also, people think that having the games here will increase job opportunities and tourism but the reality is that this is only short-term. The Olympics bring no sustainability to the city, province, or country.  And history has shown that tourism in host cities only increases at the time of the games. Many small businesses cannot sustain themselves because the people coming in for the games are high rollers and they go to the high rolling restaurants and hotels. Meanwhile, the small guys get trampled on because the people in their community that they would normally receive business from are leaving because the Olympics cause such disturbance in their every day life with road closures etc. You may think that two weeks shouldn’t impact them too much, but two weeks is huge when bills are due. Basically the only people who benefit economically are the IOC, corporate sponsors and real estate developers who get involved in building the venues and Olympic infrastructure such as highways and transit improvements.

I am taking a course about Community Development right now. In some of my readings the authors discussed how you need to weigh the risk to the community against the benefit to both the community and society. There are so many benefits to the Olympics. I have listed some of them, but there are obviously more, but are they really worth it? Is entertainment that valuable to us? The fact that Erik works at an emergency shelter has definitely opened my eyes and softened to my heart to the injustices toward low-income and impoverished people. But it goes beyond them. The Olympics impact us all in more ways than we realize.

I am by no means trying to convince anyone to boycott the Olympics. I just want to challenge you to think about the bigger issues. I want you to think about the lasting impact these games will have on our community and on the many communities it has and will affect in the years to come. I do not think we should do away with the Olympics, but I do think drastic changes need to be made to make them a time of celebration for all.