Vancouver View - Six-Month Countdown Begins; Group Finding Housing for Visitors

VANOC CEO John Furlong looks ahead to the final six months before the 2010 Winter Olympics. (ATR/B. Mackin)VANOC Begins Six-Month Countdown

Vancouver 2010 CEO John Furlong is encouraging staff to “celebrate their exhaustion” as VANOC avoids pausing to commemorate the Aug. 12 six-month countdown to the Winter Games.

“The days are long, people are very focused, we’re still bringing in new recruits, and new people every week,” Furlong said. “It’s getting very exciting, It feels to me like the years since Prague have just evaporated. They’re just gone.”

Furlong described the VANOC battle to break-even on its $1.6 billion operations budget as a “flat out effort in every corner of the organization” to find new revenue, cut costs and find companies and individuals to donate their time.

“We all like the victories that we grind at the hardest for,” he said. “I never thought I’d be sitting here saying that this may be one of the areas that the organizing committee gets most of its kudos from that it managed the most complicated project in the world against this backdrop and pulled it off.”

VANOC issued a July 30 plea to local companies and governments to loan 1,500 people to fill a variety of jobs for eight-week to six-month terms. The first attempt at a secondment program last November drew only 45 people from 20 sponsors and governments. So far, the B.C. government has committed an additional 200 staff.

“We are looking at pieces of the project we could get someone else to do, if they can do it,” he said. “We want them to do it, because for them it’s an Olympic experience that takes a burden away from the organizing committee.”

Furlong still forecasts a ticket sellout by the beginning of the Games, but would not disclose the latest sales figures.

VANOC sold $134.8 million through April 30. The target is $237 million.

Home For The Games

VANOC has secured 21,000 rooms for the Olympic family in Metro Vancouver and Sea-to-Sky, leaving spectators relying on bed and breakfasts, campgrounds and private homes.

A Vancouver non-profit society is compiling a catalogue of 1,000 properties in Metro Vancouver on HomeForTheGames.com for matching with Olympic visitors seeking reasonably priced accommodations in February.

“It’s the middle of winter in Vancouver, let’s make sure everybody has a house over their head,” said Home For The Games project manager Tracey Axelsson.

Deposits paid by visitors, worth at least 50% of room fees, will go directly to the Streetohome Foundation and Covenant House, two charities aiding residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside ghetto. The landlord will collect the rest.

Volunteers are being recruited to evaluate properties for the site. No fees will be charged, but landlords will be encouraged to price fairly.

Watchdog Barking

Olympic watchdog Am Johal used the Omega Countdown Clock in Vancouver to publicize his complaint to the United Nations human rights commission against VANOC, the IOC and Canadian governments.

Johal hand-delivered a 15-page complaint to the UN human rights commission on July 31 in Geneva, Switzerland. It alleges that Games organizers and partners have breached several clauses in three UN accords, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“You can’t suspend human rights just for the sake of the Olympic Games and tenants shouldn’t be second-class citizens and people in the inner city shouldn’t be disproportionately targeted in terms of policing methods,” said Johal, chairman of Impact on Communities Coalition.

Johal wants the UN to send monitors to the city to prevent evictions and violations of free speech. He said tenant protection bylaws are too weak and bylaws aimed at preventing ambush marketing too strong.

B.C. Civil Liberties Association executive director David Eby said the omnibus civic bylaw passed in July is unconstitutional and open to abuse.

“Laws that can be abused often are abused,” Eby said.

Female Ski Jumpers to Appeal

Female ski jumpers will go before the B.C. Court of Appeal in November in another attempt to become eligible for the 2010 Winter Olympics. (Getty Images)The British Columbia Court of Appeal will hear a Nov. 12 and 13 appeal from lawyers representing female ski jumpers hoping to compete at Vancouver 2010.

On July 10, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon upheld a 2006 International Olympic Committee decision against adding women’s ski jumping to the Games. She found the IOC committed gender discrimination, but she had no jurisdiction because it is based in Switzerland.

If the Court of Appeal overturns Fenlon’s verdict and the IOC asks VANOC to add the sport, “We would move heaven and earth to make it happen,” Furlong said.

A men’s only ski jumping competition at the Whistler Olympic Park in the Callaghan Valley is the only event of the Games’ opening day.

Green Power Knocked

The provincial power regulator has rejected VANOC sponsor BC Hydro’s independent power production strategy.

The July 29 B.C. Utilities Commission said the plan to source energy from so-called run of river projects was flawed because most energy would be produced during the spring runoff when demand is low.

The province and BC Hydro have promoted the projects as environmentally friendly, but environmentalists say they ruin river ecosystems.

One of the biggest joint ventures is a GE/Plutonic Power project on the Sunshine Coast.

Briefs…

Kardinal Offishal is among the Canadian musicians who recorded a Coca-Cola jingle for the 2010 Games. (Getty Images)…Canadian and American warplanes are testing the skies above southwestern B.C. and northwestern Washington on Aug. 12 and 13 for their latest pre-Olympic exercise. The event is known as Fabric Virgo on the Canadian side of the border and Falcon Virgo in the U.S. Exercise Gold, the full-scale, pre-Olympic military and police rehearsal, is Nov. 2-7.

…A supergroup of Canadian musicians has recorded Open Happiness, a Coca-Cola jingle that will be used at Olympic torch relay stops and Vancouver 2010 live sites. Kardinal Offishal, Jay Malinowski of Bedouin Soundclash and Couer de pirate are the musicians who recorded the jingle.

…The land-locked Canadian province of Saskatchewan is spending $3.28 million for a pavilion near Molson Canadian Hockey House. Saskatchewan’s six-story, inflatable projection dome will be part of the Concord Pacific live site near facilities for Ontario and Quebec.

Prices reported in U.S. dollars except where noted. Based on CAD$1=USD$0.911.

With reporting from Bob Mackin in Vancouver.