Vancouver View – Olympics Experience at any Price, Vancouver Village Costs Rise, Guergis Defends Actions

Being Part of it All: $285,000

VANOC is offering 100 limited edition packages for $285,000 each to be a part of the Olympic experience. The Vancouver 2010 Club: Patron's Program packages include tickets to all ceremonies, hockey's men's and women's gold medal matches, curling, figure skating and snowboarding medals events, a guaranteed spot in the torch relay, entry to the opening ceremony of the IOC session and a car and driver for the Games. Ten of the packages have been sold. The program is modeled after Salt Lake 2002's Ambassador Program.

Village Cost Concerns

The Vancouver Olympic Village could be Construction costs for the Olympic Village in Vancouver may be rising into the millions. (ATR)as much as $60 million over budget.

Vancouver city council met behind closed doors last week to discuss the matter, but Mayor Sam Sullivan said "we don't talk about in-camera items."

Sullivan claims the project is "financially stable," but wouldn't deny there are cost overruns.

"From the developer's point of view costs are going up, not any greater than any other project," he said, before leaving to a meeting of Olympic city mayors in Switzerland.

Concerns about budget pressure are not new. In March, Vancouver city council awarded BTY Group a $300,000 contract, without a public competition, for "cost consulting and project monitoring." BTY principal Neill McGowan wouldn't comment on his company's work, citing a confidentiality clause.

Millennium Development principals Peter Malek and Shahram Malekyazdi did not return phone messages. The Olympic Village mortgage is held by New York-based Fortress Credit Corporation and Vancouver city hall.

Millennium agreed to pay $193 million, including a $28.9 million deposit, for the land and building rights for what will become Millennium Water after the Games. VANOC paid $30 million and city hall agreed to spend $153.4 million to remove contaminated soil and install services and utilities.

"Clearly (the city) doesn't want the public to know what's going on," said Olympic watchdog and Work Less Party city council candidate Chris Shaw. "We're heading into a civic election, this has the potential to be a very messy issue for the ruling NPA and for Vision Vancouver."

Guergis Defends Actions for Women's Ski Jump

Canada's sport secretary is defending herself amid accusations she has done little to lobby for women's ski jumping to be included in Vancouver 2010.

Helena Guergis, through a spokesman, claims she has discussed the matter with various people in the Olympic movement and other domestic and foreign politicians.

On Oct. 1, Calgary's Zoya Lynch, a 17-year-old member of the Canadian women's ski jumping team, joined nine female ski jumpers from six countries in a lawsuit filed against VANOC on May 21.

Guergis agreed last January to lobby the IOC on behalf of the Canadian team under the terms of a Canadian Human Rights Commission settlement.

No trial date has been set in the matter and examination for discovery has not started.

Hospitality Packages on Sale Oct. 10

Residents of Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Sweden, United States and countries within the European Union will be able to jump to the head of the Olympics ticket line on Oct. 10 when hospitality packages go on sale through CoSport. The company and its sister company Jet Set Sports are the official hospitality providers for Vancouver 2010.

Tickets are on a first-come, first-served basis and range from accommodations with event tickets to all inclusive options.

VANOC has pledged to get tough with unauthorized ticket brokers by invoking a blanket no scalping clause to be printed on all tickets. There are no municipal laws in Metro Vancouver to regulate the resale of tickets. Executive Vice President of Revenue, Marketing and Communications Dave Cobb said authorized foreign agents are allowed to charge 20 percent more to cover administration and distribution costs. Cobb wouldn't say how many tickets that CoSport and its sister company Jet Set Sports were allocated.

VANOC and CoSport's parallel five-week Olympic ticket application windows opened Oct. 3.

Petro-Canada Underwrites Family Tickets

Petro-Canada announced a $3 million program Oct. 1 to give four nights room and board at the Listel Hotel plus ground transportation and event tickets to two members of each Canadian Olympian and Paralympian's immediate family. Transportation to Vancouver is not included and will be coordinated through Jet Set Sports.

Stephen Keith, Petro-Canada's director of Olympic and community partnerships, said it's "an opportunity (for parents) to know they're guaranteed great seats to watch their child perform."

Rupert: Olympic Protesters Undermining Olympic Spirit

A former public relations consultant for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics said anti-Games protesters are essentially undermining athletes.

Jaime Rupert told a 2010 Legacies Now-sponsored Vancouver Board of Trade group on Oct. 1 Jamie Rupert speaks out against Olympic protesters. (ATR)that the Olympics are a target because they're an enormous media spectacle. She was responding to a question from an audience member about how to respond to protesters who disrupt sponsored events in the wake of protests against the Canadian Pacific Spirit Train tour.

"What the community won't tolerate, and we saw this in Salt Lake, is protesters protesting against the Olympic spirit," said Rupert, now associate senior counsel with Vancouver's Reputations Corporation. "If you think about it, they're protesting against the athletes, that's what these Games are all about."

She advised media outlets to pay less attention to protesters. Protesters, meanwhile, should reject violence.

"There's a better way to make your point," Rupert said. "You think of the great people who changed the world through very non-violent things."

Anti-Games protesters who were promoting native and homeless rights descended on the Sept. 21 Port Moody launch of the Spirit Train. Two were arrested after a minor skirmish with a cameraman. Similar protests were held at Spirit Train stops in Calgary and Edmonton, where at two people climbed aboard the train and displayed a banner reading Resist 2010.

Meanwhile, the Olympic Resistance Network is planning a day-long Why Resist 2010? conference Oct. 26 at Simon Fraser University's Harbor Centre campus in downtown Vancouver.

Bombardier to Showcase Streetcars During Olympics

Bombardier will showcase two streetcars at the 2010 Games. (Getty Images)The City of Vancouver is paying $8 million to replace railway tracks so VANOC sponsor Bombardier can showcase $2 million worth of streetcars from Brussels.

The two European-built Flexity Outlook low-floor trains will make their North American debut as the Olympic Line, Vancouver's 2010 Streetcar, from Jan. 21 to March 21, 2010.

"It's a real transportation need during the Olympics, connecting the Canada Line station at the Olympic Village," said Bombardier Canada general manager Steve Hall. "The City of Vancouver is anticipating at least 500,000 people will ride these two street cars."

The streetcars will run from 6:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. at a peak frequency of once every six minutes on a 1.8 kilometer route between the Olympic Village rapid transit station and Granville Island, a former industrial district known for restaurants and galleries.

Complaint Against Campbell Cohort

The NDP has complained to the RCMP over the activities of a friend of Premier Gordon Campbell.

The provincial opposition party wants the force to investigate Patrick Kinsella, who oversaw the Liberal Party's 2005 re-election campaign, for acting as a lobbyist without registering. The NDP launched the complaint after a lawyer for Kinsella said his client didn't consent to an investigation by the provincial registrar of lobbyists. The registrar needs consent to launch an investigation, but the RCMP doesn't.

An executive of a payday loan company hired Kinsella in spring 2007 to arrange meetings with then Solicitor-General John Les.

Kinsella's company, The Progressive Group, boasted to the government of the state of Washington in 2006 that it "has a presence in the provincial capital of Victoria and a foot into the Vancouver 2010 Organizing Committee" and promised to set up meetings with cabinet ministers and VANOC executives.

With reporting from Bob Mackin in Vancouver.

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