Dear Editor; in my youth I was an athlete, and since then have enthusiastically followed athletic events, especially the Olympics. Never did I expect that the heart and spirit of the Olympics would be so swallowed by a monstrous corporate- profit agenda. (Witness Salt Lake City and the gargantuan losses in Athens which now jeopardizes the stability of the money system of Europe.) Ever since Vancouver won the bid, there has been our own accrual of a factual reality that is depressing to say the least.
The proposed Olympic costs originally set out over seven years ago have continually skyrocketed; all the estimates were grossly and to me intentionally misleading. In Sept. 2006, the B.C auditor-general severely criticized the Liberals for not disclosing all the Olympic related costs.
The naked greed of VANOC catering to the IOC, has now raised the total for the games to $8 Billion. That's nearly $471 Million A Day, for the seventeen days of the event.
What is anyone to think - if not caught up in the Olympic hype, when the real context reveals on the very day of the Opening Ceremonies, that the Liberals will be cutting $10 million from services that provide relief to the province's most needy children and families.
This follows all the previous massive cuts B.C residents outside of Vancouver have sustained, to the essential Social Services of Health Care, Education, Environment, Parks, with personnel and budgets cut repeatedly to the bone. Why? No funds. (Who can forget the huge deficit the Liberals revealed AFTER they got re-elected?)
How does this Olympic bash of over spending affect us? The much-needed CT Scanner Kootenay residents are fundraising for Nelson
Hospital, costs $1.5 million. Last summer IHA ordered Hospital cooks to limit the amount spent on patient's meals to $7.00 per patient Per Day. That $2.33 per meal must include special diet requirements and snacks. The School Districts of B.C have collectively estimated that they are short $300 million just to keep the standard of education at its present level. Schools are being closed. Parents with sick children, people of low income, the elderly, need a place to stay during their medical treatments and turn to Easter Seal House. It too, has been cut of all its government funding.
Think of the 3000 homeless, many who have mental illness on the streets of Vancouver, the block-long line ups for the soup kitchens, the medical research stymied for lack of government funds, and then remember the Athletes Village alone cost $1 Billion; security more than 1 Billion; the new Convention Centre $1 Billion, the $900,000 the Liberals spent on tickets for business interests, members of non B.C governments and Liberal MLAs. Imagine what even a small percentage of this huge expenditure of taxpayers' money could have done for all the real needs of B.C residents.
The Liberal's own "comprehensive" study released Nov. 2009, of the initial five years of Olympic preparatory work, reported a miniscule increase of one-tenth of one per cent of economic growth. The Winter Olympics are now being predicted by a Price Waterhouse Coopers study to become a financial failure.
People say to those who point out these facts "Stop whining and enjoy the games." This says ignore $471 million a day to feel good, consequences be damned. But taxpayers who are footing this preposterous cost have good reason to be frustrated and angry if not outright disgusted.
