Vancouver International Airport, where Robert Dziekanski died following being tazed by the RCMP.Taser Video Shocks Canada
The use of Tasers in Canada is being reviewed following the death of a Polish immigrant on Wednesday. Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Border Services and the Vancouver International Airport Authority are under fire following the death of the 40-year-old man.
The RCMP are the main agency coordinating Games-time security.
Robert Dziekanski arrived in Vancouver on flight Nov. 13 from Frankfurt and spent 10 hours unaccompanied in the airport’s customs hall. Reports indicate Dziekanski mistakenly waited for his mother in the baggage area rather than passing through the customs section to enter the main part of the airport.
Another passenger videotaped a disoriented and agitated Dziekanski around 1:15 a.m. Nov. 14 throwing furniture in the international arrivals area. Airport security guards mistook him for a Russian-speaker, but reportedly did not attempt to find a translator to defuse the situation. Less than a minute after four RCMP officers arrived, a Taser was used on the man. He subsequently died before paramedics arrived.
At one point the video was seized from traveler Paul Pritchard, who subsequently sued the RCMP to have it returned. The death is the latest in a series of recent scandals that have tarnished the image of the Mounties.
Poland’s ambassador to Canada Piotr Ogrodzinski and members of Vancouver’s Polish community are seeking answers.
Vancouver International Airport will be the main point of entry for 2010 Games visitors from around the world.
VANOC Winding Up Year
VANOC’s last 2007 board meeting will be Nov. 21 in Richmond with a tour of the Richmond speedskating oval construction site and a press conference on the schedule.
The big question will be whether chairman Jack Poole attends. He missed July and September board meetings because of treatment for pancreatic cancer. He recently returned home to Vancouver after an extended stay at a Seattle cancer clinic. Rusty Goepel, who chaired the last two meetings, said in September that VANOC could vote to appoint a vice-chairman.
Village People
Millennium Development, the company building the Vancouver Olympic village, is buying $15 million of goods produced in Vancouver’s inner city.
The company plans to hire 100 inner city workers and spend $750,000 on training. It’s part of an agreement hatched with Building Opportunities with Business, a civic, provincial and federal program born out of the Vancouver 2010 bid’s sustainability promises.
Dome in Doubt
The post-Games fate of Vancouver’s Olympic stadium remains unknown.
The domed ceremonies venue will BC Placebe the only site to be open every day of the Games, Feb. 12 to 28. The stadium opened in 1983.
David Podmore, chair of B.C. PavCo, the organization that operates the dome, was to have submitted recommendations to the provincial government in October. Podmore is considering whether to keep the stadium or demolish it and sell the land after 2010. Stadium management is booking events up to 2012.
Meanwhile, the report into the Jan. 5 roof rip and collapse has not been published. No injuries were reported, but a joint staff-management committee was to probe the incident and report to WorkSafe BC, the provincial occupational safety agency.
An avalanche of snow, ice and slush cut a hole in the Teflon-coated fiberglass roof after several snow alarms were ignored. General manager Howard Crosley said a steam heating system was not used because of its cost.
Contracts Announced
VANOC this week announced a list of contracts that have been awarded over the last couple of months.
… Panasonic was named public announcement system provider to Vancouver 2010 nine days after it renewed as a global Olympic sponsor on Sept. 3. In keeping with VANOC policy, the contract’s value was not revealed.
… Toronto-based CNW was named media distribution contractor on Sept. 15, the same day New Jersey-based Factiva won the media monitoring contract. Factiva is a division of Rupert Murdoch’s DowJones Company.
… Integrated Warehousing Solutions, based near Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, got VANOC’s logistics management system contract on Oct. 15.
… Synovate, part of London, England-based Aegis Group, and Ipsos-Reid, part of Paris-based Ipsos, join Canadian companies Angus Reid Strategies and Charlton Strategic Research on VANOC’s public opinion research roster. The shops were chosen Sept. 21 and Oct. 10.
Red, Blue, Yellow, Green And Black Light District 2010?
A group of Vancouver prostitutes wants a legal brothel by 2010.
The B.C. Coalition of Experiential Communities said the federal government should permit such a facility, just like it allows a heroin and cocaine shooting parlor in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside ghetto.
Earlier this year, the Sex Professionals of Canada launched a constitutional challenge, hoping to decriminalize Canada’s anti-prostitution laws.
Seawall Reopens
The Stanley Park Seawall The Stanley Park Seawallin Vancouver -- the most famous walkway on Canada’s west coast -- reopened Nov. 16. The perimeter of the country’s biggest urban park was badly damaged by hurricane-force winds last December. Thousands of trees fell, including some estimated at 1,000 years old. It was the worst storm to hit the city since Typhoon Freda of 1962.
With reporting from Bob Mackin in Vancouver.
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