Vanoc, FNFH & RCMP No Show at Student Olympic Conference
Vanoc, FNFH & RCMP No Show at Student Olympic Conference
On Saturday Jan. 31, 2009, a Student Olympic Conference was held at the University of BC (UBC) in an effort to stimulate critical thinking about the 2010 Games. Originally set to be an Olympic promotional event with a large number of speakers from Vanoc, the Four Host First Nations and RCMP, the conference expanded to include anti-Olympic perspectives with several representatives from the Olympic Resistance Network (ORN). Two days prior to the event, members of Vanoc, FHFN and the RCMP withdrew, clearly afraid of publicly debating the negative impacts of 2010.
Below are two articles by Vancouver Sun columnist Jeff Lee on the Student Olympic Conference.
On police, sustainability and other pointy Olympic issues
By Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun, Feb 2, 2009, Inside the 2010 Olympics column
Will the 2010 Winter Olympics provide an economic benefit? Will the Vancouver Police and the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit use the Olympics as an exercise to whack the marginalized and poor of the Downtown Eastside?
Will scientists win the fight against drug cheats masquerading as athletes whose morals are driven by dollars rather than ethics?
Is the Vancouver Olympics really a Trojan horse for real estate interests that want to grab "unceded" land from First Nations and build more condos?
These and other provocative questions were pondered - if not answered - at a weekend conference organized by University of B.C. students.
I spent Saturday up at UBC's Life Sciences building dashing between breakout sessions that dealt with all of the above subjects, and more.
I found several things interesting.
1. For as provocative an event as the Olympics is - especially given some of the topics of late - the conference didn't attract a lot of people. There were perhaps 300 involved, all totaled, and that included students, professors, speakers and the one or two other media who attended.
2. The forums weren't highly politicized, despite the fact this was held on a university famous for student protests and still hanging on to a reputation arising from the APEC protests of 1997. There were, to be sure, provocative and politicized statements, but this was a place where you could actually hear brains cogitating and views forming. Which validated co-organizer Meena Sharma's motto of "Think. Discuss. Act."
3. I liked the fact that the organizers didn't shy away from trying to balance disparate views. They had Conrad Schmidt, the founder of the Work Less Party (who cleverly produced a lapel button years ago that said "Clocks Kill Dreams") sitting with business academics. There was even Gord Hill, the No2010.com webmaster who was arrested for assaulting a Vanoc staffer during the three-year countdown at the Vancouver Art Gallery. (He's the one who coined the term "No Games on stolen native land.)
I heard via the grapevine that the Four Host First Nations Secretariat, the Olympic authority acting for the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish and Lil'wat bands, withdrew from a panel on aboriginal issues after it discovered Hill was also on the panel.
4. There were no Vanoc staff on any of the panels other than Jack Taunton, the chief medical officer, and anti-doping expert Matthew Fedoruk. Patrick Jarvis, a member of Vanoc's board of directors, was there speaking on his own behalf as a Paralympian, but there was a notable absence of any Vanoc experts in the other areas.
Vanoc spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade says it has everything to do with the fact staff are gearing up for the rash of test sporting events and those who aren't doing so have to eat up vacation time now before the one-year countdown celebrations next week.
Still, the conference was a useful exercise, and I'm told the organizers hope to have another one next year just before the Games, followed by a wrap-up in 2011.
Everything Olympic dissected
UBC students at conference have one day to discuss everything from media to civil rights with community leaders and academics
Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun, Monday, February 02, 2009
In one classroom, speakers debated whether the 2010 Winter Games would really generate any economic benefits.
In another room, the topic was whether the Olympics will hurt the city's most marginalized residents in the Downtown Eastside, while in a third room, academics discussed new efforts to root out cheating in sports.
On Saturday, several hundred students at the University of B.C. listened to, and participated in, discussions on many of the sensitive issues that have emerged around Vancouver's decision to host the Winter Olympics.
The sticky topics of transportation, infrastructure, media sponsorship, security and civil liberties, the impact on first nations communities and the value of the Paralympics were also part of the Student Olympic Conference, the first of its kind.
The one-day event was the brainchild of several business, sociology and law students who said they wanted to discuss Olympic-related issues in an academic setting.
"We wanted to give students an opportunity to think about the issues around the Olympics," said Jason Ng, a co-chairman of the conference.
"In the past there has not been too much discussion involving students."
Meena Sharma, another organizer, said the motto of the conference, "Think. Discuss. Act." was picked because it was an attempt to get beyond the flash-point emotional reactions the Games sometimes create.
"The point of the conference is about critical discussion about the Olympics," she said. "We're not cheerleading or trashing the Olympics, but providing a forum for dialogue. We wanted students to hear more about these issues beyond the headlines."
The conference, underwritten by several faculties and the university's Olympic and Paralympic Games Secretariat, featured a broad cross-section of academics, civil libertarians, scientists, community activists and even several anti-Olympics protesters.
In the session on economic impacts, Daniel Muzyka, the dean of the Sauder School of Business, argued that the legacy of the Games will be positive.
Sitting next to him, Conrad Schmidt, the founder of the Work Less Party and director of the controversial film Five Ring Circus -- the Untold Story of the Vancouver Olympics, called them a financial and environmental disaster and said the Vancouver Organizing Committee "fraudulently misrepresented" the cost of security for the Games.
Lone Non-Partisan Association city councillor Suzanne Anton debated the impact of the Olympics on the environment with Pina Belperio, the founder of the citizen activist group Whistler Watch.
In a session on first nations, academic Christine O'Bansawin, director of the indigenous studies minor program at the University of Victoria, discussed the use of indigenous cultures and symbolism, while Gord Hill, arrested two years ago after he stormed the stage of a Vanoc announcement at the unveiling of the countdown clock, said the events were being held on "stolen native land."
And David Eby, Am Johal, Ann Livingston and Wendy Pederson all outlined their worries about how the Olympics may affect the poor despite promises by Vanoc not to allow that to happen.
On a campus made famous for anti-APEC and anti-globalization protests a decade ago that led to clashes with police and sparked a federal inquiry, the issue of civil liberties and security around the Olympics was the hottest topic of the conference.
Michael Byers, a UBC professor and member of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, sharply criticized the RCMP-led Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit, which he said has rebuffed attempts at dialogue with social activist groups that want to exercise their rights to protest the Olympics.
He said the RCMP has not adopted in practice the findings of APEC Inquiry commissioner Ted Hughes, and he believes the ISU is on the same path toward confrontation that led to the APEC clashes.
Last week Assistant Commissioner Bud Mercer, the head of the ISU, told reporters the unit had met with activist groups and was working to help them protest peacefully. The ISU refused to release a list of the groups it has met with.
Byers, who with former judge Jerome Paradis is a member of an ad-hoc Olympic human rights committee formed by the BCCLA, disputed Mercer's claim.
He said the ISU has only met with them once, and the meeting went nowhere.
He said the BCCLA committee met with activist groups and wanted to act as a bridge between them and the RCMP to provide "quiet, constructive words of advice." Instead, he said, they were all but ignored.
"It hasn't been easy when dealing with the authorities," he said. "With respect, we have pretty much hit a brick wall."
"In my view, the ISU . . . has lost sight of those human rights principles and have focused excessively on the search for "perfect security."
That search, created in a post-9/11 environment, leaves little room in the mind of police for the legitimate rights of people to peacefully protest where they want, he said.
While Byers said he's not given up hope of working with the ISU, another civil libertarian, Jason Gratl, says he has.
Gratl, a former president of the BCCLA, said he's planning to go to court to obtain orders restraining police from interfering with citizens' rights to lawfully protest where they want. He said he disagrees with the recent trend of setting up "protest pens" where activists can be directed.
Gratl also raised concerns that the RCMP will resort to the use of "agent provocateurs" to manufacture a crisis during the Games that will require a strong police response.
He pointed out that protesters found such police agents in their midst during anti-globalization protests at the Montebello, Quebec summit between the U.S., Canada and Mexico in 2007.
There were several notable absences at the UBC conference. There were no law enforcement representatives. Nor was there anyone speaking officially for the Vancouver Organizing Committee on any of the controversial panels.
Sharma and Ng said Vanoc officials were invited and agreed to come, but later cancelled "due to unforeseen circumstances."
Vanoc spokeswoman Renee Smith-Valade said staff were pulled because of a heavy schedule of test sporting events and the looming one-year countdown.
She said Vanoc is happy to provide speakers, even for controversial subjects, but it couldn't meet the students' demands because of the conflicting events.
However, Vanoc wasn't totally absent. Dr. Jack Taunton, Vanoc's chief medical officer, and Dr. Matthew Fedoruk, a member of Vanoc's anti-doping team, were on the science of sports panel.
A keynote speaker was Paralympian Patrick Jarvis, a director of both Vanoc and 2010 Legacies now and a member of the International Paralympic Committee. However, he told the students he wasn't speaking for any of those groups.