Hiding Olympic Security Costs behind Obama Visit

By Jeff Lee Feb 20, 2009, Vancouver Sun (columnist- Inside the Olympics)

No one should be surprised, I suppose, that the Canadian federal and provincial governments chose Thursday to admit security for the 2010 Olympic Games has skyrocketed to a dizzying $900 million.

After all, politicians and their handlers couldn't have asked for a better day to announce bad news. Governments in Canada are legendary for quietly nudging toxic news out the door late on Fridays when there is no sitting of Parliament or Legislature and lawmakers are on their way home for the weekend.

But this day was even better than a Friday, what with U.S. President Barack Obama's historic visit to Canada drawing away much of the media spotlight. No sooner had Air Force One lifted off from Ottawa than out popped a pair of coordinated releases from the offices of Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan and B.C. Finance Minister Colin Hansen. Bottom line: that originally defensible security budget of $175 million had now ballooned to just shy of a $1 billion. That's a thousand million dollars.

The cynics would hope that the public would be distracted by the glitz and glamour of Obama's visit and not pay attention to a little thing like, oh, your security budget just went up by 514 per cent and there's no guarantee it won't go higher. Especially considering that for weeks Ottawa and Victoria types have been hinting that the budget details would be announced imminently.

Van Loan told me in an interview this evening he's confident security planners have now got it right. But then, in the next breath, he noted a caveat that things like a terrorist attack or similar incident could raise the threat level and hence the cost of responding to that new threat.

Hansen has also sown a bit of confusion into the story by saying the province has agreed to pay $165 million more but that the money will actually come from capital budgets over the next three years and will be used on advancing already-approved infrastructure projects that would have been paid for by the feds. Doing it this way means Victoria can simply move around where the money comes from but the result is the same: B.C.'s share of the security budget has gone from $87.5 million to $252.5 million.

We will find out more in the coming days about how those numbers were arrived at and how they work. But here's a little bit of what we know:

The original $175 million included $6.7 million for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Public Safety Canada programming, Public Health Canada and the Department of National Defence. The remaining $168.3 million was for Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit policing.

Today's announcement has a far different look: CSIS, the national spy agency, gets $11 million. Defence, $212 million, PSC $1.2 million and Health $900,000. Policing jumps three-fold to $491.9 million. And that doesn't include a lot of money for other agencies that weren't even contemplated in the original budget.

If you wanted any proof that the right hand of government sometimes doesn't know what the left hand does, consider this: the decision to put out the dual press releases (here and here-- [links omitted]) (and coordinate a short-notice media availability with Hansen) was apparently done so fast that the ISU was left scrambling.

The head of the ISU, RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bud Mercer (the guy whose planners largely crafted the revised budget) was enroute back from Ottawa when the announcement was made, and was booked to go to a medal-presentation ceremony for RCMP colleagues at Lieutenant-Governor Steven Point's house in Victoria.

In recent months the ISU, under Mercer, has made an effort to be more open about its work, as compared to his predecessor, Chief Supt. Bob Harriman, who made as much an effort to lock the doors and keep the unit out of the media spotlight. Under Harriman's watch the RCMP E Division's prime media man, Staff Sgt. John Ward (now retired) on more than one occasion told me the original $175 million budget estimate was adequate given the job they were being asked to do.

He's also the guy who once told a reporter "the public doesn't have a right to know anything" when asked about the public's right to know about the death of a man in police custody.

In a July, 2006 story in which the head of the Senate Committee on Security and others said the price of Olympic security would likely be more than double the estimate, Ward said security planners had consulted with the organizers of the last the three Olympics but weren't going to be swayed by their views.

"We don't compare different Olympics with Canada's," he stated. "It's not very useful for us to discuss in comparison with Salt Lake, Turin, Greece and all these different venues because they are very different from Canada. It's of no value to us whatsoever."

Unfortunately, it's of more value than one might have thought. Salt Lake's security cost $310 million US. Athens spent $1.5 billion US on security, including major improvements to its communications system and 70,000 police officers. And Turin, which said it spent $140 million on policing, not including the military, is actually believed to have spent better than $1.4 billion on security, according to ardent anti-Olympics protester Chris Shaw.

Mercer is no singing canary, but he's also made no bones about the fact the original budget estimate was grossly out of whack and that it would cost a lot more to keep athletes, the public and visiting dignitaries safe.

Now, the real question is how much of a sideswiping cities like Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey and others will get in terms of increased policing during the Games. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, whose police department is caught in the middle of a vicious gang war, made it clear today he's worried taxpayers will get a big bill for policing outside of the venues covered by the federal-provincial Olympic agreement.