VANOC skates around the truth

After months of closed door meetings, Vancouver's Olympic organizers (VANOC) released an alleged business plan yesterday (which for those of you scoring home, has not been independently audited). VANOC claims that their $1.63 billion budget, with a contingency of $100 million, is balanced. Before anyone lines up to give them a medal, this page would like to remind readers that shooting fish in a barrel is not an Olympic event (yet).

Breaking down VANOC's report (which again, has not been independently audited), it becomes clear that under this arrangement, Glen Clark could have balanced this budget (editors note: court ordered bone tossed to BC Lieberal revisionist pukes). The 2010 Olympics are in a North American time zone, which means a television windfall bigger than last winter in Stanley Park. Most of the major venues (BC Place, GM Place, Pacific Coliseum) are already built, saving on skyrocketing construction costs. This page isn't going to credit VANOC for being frugal when they don't actually have to pay for much of anything.

Nor am I going to let slide that most Olympic-related spending isn't even in their "business plan"(which once more, has not been independently audited AND is exempt from the British Columbia Freedom of Information Act). The costs of imposing martial law...er...Olympic Security are delegated to the RCMP. The upgrades to the Sea to Sky Highway and the Canada Line have been painted with a glorious shade of BC Lieberal bullsh*t that neither project counts as Olympic spending, despite the fact that both projects absolutely must be completed by 2010. The City of Richmond broke their municipal piggy bank to steal the proposed speedskating oval from Simon Fraser University. That leaves SFU without the classroom space they were going to use the building for after the Games, and Richmond taxpayers are stuck with a sinkhole full of slushy kindling after anything over 1.5 on the Richter scale.

Vancouver is also left without the social housing that Olympic organizers promised in 2003, which in hindsight, was only to sucker many of the 65% of Vancouver voters who endorsed the 2010 bid, including admittedly, this page. I would have liked to see an Olympics that worked for the community instead of taking advantage of the community. I would have liked to have seen a real surplus we could have used on things more important than funding sports programs for the self-indulgent spoiled brats of the upper-middle class (the current target of VANOC's proposed surplus). VANOC's report says that their current Olympic path won't make Vancouver any worse, but there's certainly nothing in it that will make Vancouver better.