Gee Canada Drops $1 Billion on G8 & G20

Property taxes in Canada’s largest city are rising, the country’s largest province is implementing a new combined federal/provincial tax in July, and many are still getting over the effects of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Yet today’s estimate of security costs to protect the G8 and G20 world leaders which will be in Canada for a mere 48-hours have topped the $1CDN billion mark.

The Canadian federal government says it’ll cost at least $930CDN million, but won’t release final dollar amounts until after both events, which are being hosted in Toronto, Ontario, and “cottage country” just north of Toronto, in Muskoka, Ontario.

It is expected security costs will actually be higher than estimates, due to threats and allegations from protest groups.

That’s more than double what it cost Canadian taxpayers to secure the entire 17 days of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games.

Yes, it is important that world leaders have clear and concise communications – but can Canada afford to spend a billion dollars for a mere 48 hours, to keep these people safe?

At least with the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, much of the costs to secure it were recouped through tourist dollars – if anything tourists are being discouraged to come to Toronto during the G20 and G8 summits.

Much of the downtown core – the heart of the largest city’s entertainment and tourism industry – will be shutdown and off limits due to security concerns during the G20 and G8 summits. Just yesterday, the country’s largest university – The University of Toronto – announced it was ordered to close its downtown campus for the duration of the two-day summit, because it represented a security risk. At great expense to the educational institution, they will be putting students who live on the downtown campus up at hotels, as the campus will be sealed off tighter than Fort Knox.

Other tourist attractions, such as the CNTower, the Rogers Centre, First Canadian Place, numerous theatres, clubs, restaurants, bars, hotels, the major banking skyscrapers, and many other places right in the downtown core will be off limits to anyone who either doesn’t work there, have the right security clearances, or both.

Getting around Toronto and “cottage country” will be hell in late June, when the summits are to occur – roads and highways will be sporadically closed to ferry the high ranking world leaders to the various venues of the two summits.

That and the thousands of people expected to flock to both areas to protest the summits, the leaders, and their policies, don’t make for a tourist-friendly environment.

Would you want to take your next vacation amidst the screams and chants of an angry mob?

Well, maybe the protesters will at least spend some money while at the summits, to help offset the costs?

Wait a sec . . .

Aren’t most protesters twenty-something unemployed students with too much time on their hands?

Guess not.

Oh Canada – what a country.

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Vancouver 2010 – Washed Out, Fenced In, Another Big Owe?

When I was in grade eight, I went with my school class on a field trip to Quebec – it was a rite of passage as we graduated from elementary to high school. One of the many wonders we saw was Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, with its suspended roof.

I still have the pictures from that field trip, showing the partially-covered stadium, as the roof was being repaired – again. That stadium has since been nicknamed by us Canadians as “the big owe,” because it – and much of the Olympics held in Montreal, Quebec in 1976, cost that province, the city and even the country more money than it brought in.

Ever since the Montreal Expos baseball team left Montreal (they went to just as lackluster a baseball town – Washington, D.C.) in 2004, Montreal’s Olympic Stadium has spent much of its time doing what it does best – fall apart.

Will the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics currently center stage in the world’s media suffer the same fate?

Although it is amazing to be a citizen of the host country, are two-weeks of good press worth millions of lost tax dollars?

Final attendance figures won’t be in until the Olympics packs up and leaves Canada’s west coast, but already we are seeing a string of bad luck which could washout any chance of recouping municipal, provincial and federal money spent to bring the Winter Games to Canada.

From the very public torch malfunction during the opening ceremonies, to the latest hero at the 2010 Winter Olympics – a Zamboni – of all things.

The speed skating rink suffered a premature meltdown and the ice resurfacing machine onsite malfunctioned, which forced organizers to import a Zamboni all the way from Calgary, Alberta to repair the ice rink. The Zamboni brought in was the only one powerful enough to handle the Olympic-sized ice rink

Yesterday 20,000 ticket-holding fans weren’t let into the snowboarding venue – for their own safety – because people were falling and getting stuck between the bales of hay under the trucked-in snow used to create the observation areas. The snow had been melting under Vancouver’s warm weather, creating an unstable, and unsafe, observation area.

Early this morning, construction workers finally removed the chain-link fence preventing Olympic-goers from taking pictures of the giant Olympic cauldron. A Canadian TV reporter even called the barricade a “ratty-looking prison-camp fence.”

And nothing could ever overshadow the death of a Georgian Luger on the very first day of the Olympics, just hours prior to the opening ceremonies, during a training run. The luge track has earned a reputation since its opening in 2007 as the fastest, most challenging, most feared – and now the most deadly track in the world.

So, will the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics go down bigger than the “Big Owe” in Montreal, and end up costing Canadian taxpayers more money?

Already the games have lost $1.5 million in revenues, from 28,000 canceled tickets at Cypress Mountain due to poor weather for the halfpipe and snowboardcross. Fans who spent the $50 to $65 to see the events will get their money back – but just add that to the cost to Canadian taxpayers to bring the games here.

Not to mention the cost to taxpayers to truck-in all the snow and snow-making equipment – Vancouver rarely gets much snow – who’s brainchild of an idea was it to hold the WINTER games there?

Rain and mild temperatures have prevented many events from going at their regularly scheduled times. Yesterday the men’s super-combined was postponed because of an overnight snowstorm, while the women’s downhill training was cancelled – the downhill training had previously been repeatedly postponed because of rain and warm temperatures.

Locals attending the games have begun to call it the Vancouver Summer Olympics, because of the mild wet conditions – but that joke is costing the games – and the Canadian taxpayer – plenty, with all the cancellations, and constant rescheduling of events.

The British press has already begun calling this the worst Olympic Games ever – even worse than the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, which were marred by many technical problems, and overshadowed by a terrorist bombing. The “Brits” play host to the next Olympics in London.

Maybe all of this will be good for Montreal – no longer will that Canadian city stand alone in an Olympic-sized debt?

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Vancouver 2010 – A Great Sense of What’s Lacking in Canada – Canadian Pride

Last week I just happened to tune into the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics—I almost cried with pride – yet I originally wasn’t sure if I was going to even watch the whole thing.

These things are often filled with long and overly flashy fireworks, and song and dance numbers that go on and on and . . .

There were some pretty spectacular song and dance numbers, but what really turned me around was some good old fashioned hometown pride.

Six Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers decked out in full dress uniform carried out the Canadian flag, our national anthem – Oh Canada – was sung, and members of the Canadian Forces raised the flag – WOW – my heart began to swell with Canadian pride.

Even long before our national team entered the stadium, it really hit me that these really are our games. Sure the Winter Olympics is a sports competition among the best athletes from across the globe, but being the host country, and being a cold climate country, these really are our games. We excel at winter sports here including hockey, curling and skiing.

Our Canadian spirit shone like the brightest star in the night’s sky during the opening ceremonies, as Canadian symbols filled the Olympic Stadium in Vancouver. From famous Canadian singers like K.D. Lang (who sang a song written and originally sung by fellow Canadian Lenard Cohen), and Brian Adams, to legendary, awe-inspiring Cancer-fighting marathon runner Terry Fox’s mom carrying out the Olympic flag, to other big name Canadian celebs participating in the opening ceremonies, including actor Donald Sutherland and singer Ann Murray.

Even ‘the Great One,’ legendary Canadian hockey player and former coach of our national hockey team, Wayne Gretzky was one of the final carriers of the Olympic Torch – there were rumors all that day that either Gretzky, or a hologram of Terry Fox would carry the torch.

The opening ceremonies were an amazing sight for any Canadian – instilling a sense of Canadian pride which we haven’t had in this country in a very long time.
The last time a sense of Canadianism filled our hearts, was probably – and just as ironically – back in the 1990’s during a Quebec-based referendum on whether or not to stay apart of this great land, or become its own nation. I still remember the posters “My country includes Quebec.”

Too bad we can’t have national spirit-filled days like the opening ceremonies more often in this great country of ours, that would really make this country something special.

Actually, what is slowly and silently killing our country is the over-arching lack of Canadian pride, as newcomers to this land bring with them their traditions and beliefs, and unlike the States where they take on a sense of being Canadian, they just re-create their own country here in Canada.

The numbers of Canadian citizens – YES CITIZENS – that don’t speak either of our official languages of English and French continues to grow. In Canada’s largest city, Toronto, it is estimated that about two-thirds of the city’s population doesn’t speak either English or French.

In most countries, people can’t survive without learning the language of the land, but here in Canada, sadly they can. Big business even caters to this demographic, here in Toronto, some bank machines allow you to bank in English, French or Chinese.

Big business is doing what it always does, invest in products and services which will bring in more money. Problem is, in so doing, they are destroying part of the foundation of what makes a country a country, by encouraging people to ignore local and deeply rooted cultural values, customs and societal norms.

Oh well, at least for a couple of hours, and an odd number of days, the Winter Olympics offered up something we don’t have enough of in Canada – Canadian pride.

Go Canada!

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