What Cost Security? BC Families to Pay $300 Each for Games
What cost security? If you have to ask, you're not in the game
By Craig McInnes, Vancouver Sun, January 23, 2010
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/What+cost+security+have+game/2475803/st...
Big numbers don't have much impact on me. So it wasn't until I did a little math and figured out what my family's share will be of the $900-million Olympic security budget that it really sunk in.
If we were to divide the cost equally among 34 million Canadians, each of us will be contributing $26. That would be a little over $100 for our family of four. As British Columbians, we'll be paying a lot more than that, since as the province is picking up $252 million of the $900 million directly, or about $60 each, so my family's share of the Olympic security costs rises to more than
$300.
Now we're talking real money. So much, in fact, that I think it's time to start asking whether the cost of security has become a game-changer for the Olympics.
We are approaching the point where it is costing almost as much to protect the Olympics as it does to stage them. Leave out the big-ticket items that have value on their own -- the Sea to Sky Highway, the convention centre expansion and the Canada Line -- and security is the largest single budget item for Canadian taxpayers. In London, planners for the 2012 Games are now looking at a tab that is headed toward £1.5 billion, or $2.5 billion.
Few question the need for security at any event that provides an international audience and a high-profile target. But how much is too much? Is the notion of security at any cost compatible with games that are supposed to foster international cooperation through friendly competition?
Although we've been consumed with protecting ourselves from terrorists since the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, the Olympics have been considered a likely target since 1972, when Israeli athletes were kidnapped and killed during the Munich Summer Games.
In 1996, the Atlanta Summer Games were hit by a bomb at one of the social venues in a seemingly random attack by a former U.S. army explosives expert who later claimed to be on a personal crusade against world socialism.
So we have to be worried about terrorists, both international and domestic, and garden-variety lunatics who just want to go out with a bang.
All of which means we have to consider not just the cost of security, but also the value. Sir Robert Peel's yardstick for measuring the success of policing also works here. Peel started London's police force, known in his honour as "bobbies."
One of his principles was that success should not be measured by the number of arrests made but the absence of crime.
That lack of crime -- or in the case of the Olympics any kind of disruptive or murderous attack -- is exactly what we are looking for. So we're hoping the massive forces being arrayed for the Games will succeed through intimidation rather than dramatic capture of any bad guys.
But that will leave me wondering whether the security forces actually needed all of the more than $300 my family is contributing through my taxes to achieve a couple of weeks without incident.
Especially since there is no accountability for security spending. Taxpayers are never given a chance to assess whether we are getting value for our money, we're just told to pay the bills. In this case, those bills include close to $100 million to pay for 5,000 private security officers.
Another $79 million will pay for three cruise ships to house police and military personnel.
The security forces also needed a pile of new gear. Their shopping list includes $30 million for equipment needed to detect intruders at venues, $29 million for new computers and $6 million for new radios.
BC Ferries is getting $15 million for security upgrades, as is the Canada Border Services Agency.
All of which is, we are told, necessary for our safety and the safety of our guests, athletes and Olympic officials.
Would we have been just as safe if BC Ferries had only needed $14 million, if we shaved a couple of million from the computer budget. Could we have pushed a little harder and squeezed, say, five per cent -- $45 million -- out of the security budget and given taxpayers a break?
We don't know. We never will. But I do know this: The original budget for security for the 2010 Games was $175 million. I'll remember that the next time we are considering hosting a major international event. A fivefold increase is another number I can understand.