Just smokin’!

The Olympic Village is touted as a great public-private partnership, with the public excluded by police from the speech by the private developer

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

An attractive, tall, blonde and stiffly-coiffed woman strode purposefully across the pavement in her ankle-length black coat sucking hard enough on a cigarette to pull her cheeks in tight, before pitching it with perfect trucker’s aim at a little pile of slush where it sizzled. She moved past the men with wires in their ears, exchanging nods and a polite smile, before arriving—in a specially secure area behind a large tent where Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, BC Premier Gordon Campbell, and Minister Colin Hansen were gathered—at the embattled cheek of Vancouver Kingsway MP David Emerson, and gave it a peck.

He was behind the tent with the others, along with Vancouver Olympic organizing committee chief Jack Poole, who were all getting final instructions on the highly-staged, closed-to-the-public event about to unfold for the groundbreaking ceremony at 2nd Avenue and Ontario Street, site of the future Olympic 2010 Athletes Village.

The air of second-tier power permeated the place. The wooden smiles were those of a sales convention, the sort of tragic affair where everyone can only give sales pitches to each other, even though there’s no buyers around, only other sellers.

No matter, Vancouver’s crazy foray into mega-project madness was about to begin. To set the mood, The Vancouver Firefighters Band struck up the theme song from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. I don’t make this stuff up—it’s true, ask anyone who was there.

Though David Emerson was on the stage in his official capacity as an elected official, the polite applause of the assembled crowd betrayed no recognition that his Vancouver-Kingsway constituency had not elected him as a Conservative but rather as a Liberal only two weeks before he switched parties, and were in fact protesting every day his continued claim to represent them. In fact, many of them were kept away by a phalanx of mounted police a safe 200 feet across the pavement at the gates, where they banged signs and shouted chants demanding his resignation.

Emerson, avoiding his constituents by arriving the back way, specially thanked Sullivan for his appearance at Turin to accept the Olympic flag. “It gave the news media something to run besides David Emerson stories,” said David Emerson, to a rumble of polite chuckling. The crowd from the largely working-class, highly ethnically diverse neighbourhood would have been larger had more notice been given for the middle-of-Friday event. This was the first public sighting of the new Conservative, white, multi-millionaire executive MP, who actually lives clear across town to the west, in mansion-encrusted Shaughnessy.

As he puffily wheezed through his prepared speech about opportunity and athletic excellence, during which that tall blonde sparked up another fag far behind the crowd listening inside, the constituents began again chanting and banging their signs on the chain link fence, making a sound that was reminiscent of excluded native drummers at some land claims talks.

In case anyone was mistaken about what the Olympics is going to do to Vancouver, VANOC Chair Jack Poole, with the premier, the mayor, and the federal minister—conservatives all—nodding, made it crystal clear: “This,” he said, his eyes scanning the landscape, “is the quintessential public-private partnership. . . . This partnership will be the real legacy of these games.” While these words still rolled across the vast expanse of flat pavement all around, the video presentation began: “The Games are Coming!” it screamed out.

No, thought I, they’re already here. How else to explain the budget being exhausted already, plus the entire contingency fund, before any ground has even been broken? How else to understand Poole’s explanation that the IOC forced him to estimate costs without leaving room for inflation? How else to explain the $250 million estimated cost of security when it will likely be ten times that amount?

Finally, Sullivan, with a golden hard hat on like all the other officials, pressed down on an air horn to signal to the backhoe operator to pound his shovel into the pavement and symbolically begin the massive construction project.

Later, speaking to media, Sullivan was asked why the public was not allowed in: “It’s a construction site, it wasn’t safe,” he replied, showing perfect deadpan humour. As Emerson escaped stage rear and ran the gauntlet of media, I called out his name. “I’ll be out in a minute!” he called back, the first statement to the media he made in weeks, and one that can be taken so many different ways, since he was already outside.

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