One of Pivot Legal Society's Red Tents on the streets of Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Photo by The Blackbird.

The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society, the non-profit legal advocacy organization that launched the campaign as some 350,000 visitors descended on Vancouver in February to soak up the so-called first socially sustainable Olympics.

The Red Tent campaign was pitched in response to the predicted shortage of shelter beds in the city during the Games and the failure of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and its government partners to deliver on promises related to housing and civil liberties. The distinctive tents bear the statement, “Housing is a Right. This tent is protected by Section 7 of the Charter”—the right to life, liberty and security of person. They will be popping up in urban centres across the country as Pivot expands its action, which was inspired by a landmark constitutional case: last December, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the right of homeless people to set up temporary shelters on public property when they have nowhere else to go. The campaign will continue until, Pivot says, the ultimate Olympic legacy is realized: A funded national housing strategy. Canada is the only G8 country without one. In April 2009, NDP MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East) stepped up to the podium with a private member’s bill to push for adequate, accessible and affordable housing for all Canadians, but the Conservatives didn’t support the initiative. There were Olympic dreams that Vancouver would set a golden example of how to tackle homelessness, but when the road to the Games got bumpy, promises were torched. Let’s look at what happened.

During the bid stage in 2002, a coalition of environmental and social activists and academics formed the Games-neutral Impact on Community Coalition with “the purpose of maximizing the opportunities presented by the Games and mitigating the potentially negative impacts on Vancouver’s inner-city neighbourhoods.” The IOCC successfully pushed for a referendum on the Games, and together with the bid committee and its government partners, developed the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Statement (PDF), a set of promises that was incorporated into Vancouver’s bid book and was considered binding.

The statement addresses 14 areas—including civil liberties and public safety, housing, and input into decision-making—and makes 37 specific promises. It’s been touted as an unprecedented pledge by a mega-event host city to work with low-income communities and promote social sustainability, but it materialized into little more than public relations puffery.

While the city boasted about hiring binners to collect bottles and cans left around town (meeting a commitment under employment and training) and VANOC proudly made 100,000 event tickets available for $25 each (ticking off the box next to affordable Games events), housing and civil liberties promises were glossed over.

After a quarter of Vancouverites cited homelessness as their greatest concern in a 2006 poll, ignoring the housing crisis was a Quatchi-sized gaffe. Worst of all, it broke the promise that no one would be made homeless as a result of the Olympics.

According to the Metro Vancouver Homeless Count, the number of homeless people in Vancouver increased by 135 percent from 670 in 2002 to 1,576 in 2008. The tally is believed to greatly underestimate the reality, given the difficultly in tracking down and interviewing the homeless, and housing advocates estimated there were between 4,000 and 6,000 homeless during the Olympics. (There were an estimated 5,500 athletes and officials.)

There was a promise that no one would be involuntarily displaced, evicted or face unreasonable increases in rent due to the Games. But according to the IOCC, approximately 1,300 low-income single room occupancies (SROs)—many contained in old hotels on East Hastings and considered the last option before homelessness—have been lost since the bid was won and the city is not following its own policy to replace rooms at a one-to-one rate. The city defends its record, making another promise that from 2003 to the end of 2012 it will have nearly 2,000 additional non-market units built, compared to a loss of over 1,400 units. However, these numbers don’t take into consideration rent increases that have made SROs unaffordable for low-income residents, nor does it account for rooms held vacant by landlords. Further, the city counts provincially owned rooms as new social housing, when they are newly social, but not new accommodations.

Before the Games, condos were outpacing social housing in the Downtown Eastside at a rate of three to one, and SRO residents were being booted out of their homes as landlords renovated so they could raise rents and make room for Olympic visitors. The IOCC went so far as to file a human rights complaint with the United Nations in July 2009 (PDF), saying hundreds of renters could be evicted prior to the Olympics because of loopholes in tenancy legislations, which allows for these “renovictions.”

An early version of the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment to provide affordable housing proposed by the city of Vancouver included a three-tier housing model at the Olympic Village: market price, moderate income and core-need. However, when a new city council was elected in 2005, one of its first moves was to play Monopoly with the model and commit only 25 percent of the units to “affordable housing,” and of those 252 units, between 30 and 50 percent for core-need individuals. In February 2009, the city reported that the cost of affordable housing at the village had risen from $65 million in 2006 to $110 million. And as of print time, housing advocates feared the plan would be axed completely (the city said a final decision was yet to be made).

Since they failed on the housing front, in a desperate attempt to clean up the streets before the Games, the B.C. Liberals pushed through the controversial Assistance to Shelter Act in November. Dubbed the “Olympic Kidnapping Act,” the law gives police the power to haul homeless people off the streets, pile them into paddy wagons and deposit them at shelters when there’s an extreme weather alert, which can occur in Vancouver when the temperature hovers around zero and there’s heavy rainfall (read: winter in the city). After activists rallied against the act—housing experts came forward to denounce it and Pivot said it was prepared to challenge its constitutionality in court—the chief of the Vancouver police said his officers will only use “minimal, non-forceful touching” to persuade people to accept a lift to a shelter, and will back off if they are met with resistance.

Another Inner-City Inclusive commitment was to commit to a “timely public consultation that is accessible to inner-city neighbourhoods before any security legislation or regulations are finalized,” but the community only became aware of the draconian act when a document leaked, and hasn’t been involved in any meaningful consultations.

In a last desperate attempt to quell negative media attention, BC Housing and the city teamed up to intercept international journalists at the edge of the Downtown Eastside, before they could get to the gritty stretch. They set up an information centre, Downtown Eastside Connect, at the shiny new Woodward’s site, where they shared their “successes” in tackling homelessness, including the building of social housing on 14 city-owned sites. There’s no mention of the fact that construction of these sites was delayed and not one was ready in time for the Games. The cost of the propaganda kiosk: $150,000.

Inevitably, foreign journalists found their way to the Downtown Eastside and wondered how the world’s first “socially sustainable” Games could look like this: Human wreckage, open drug use, prostitution, crumbling buildings. And a legacy of red tents instead of homes.

How could all of these promises be broken? There was no budget to implement the recommendations, including no funding for an independent watchdog; there was no enforcement mechanism and a lack of accountability; many of the goals were not measurable and the statements were wishywashy and open for interpretation. But perhaps that was the point: Get Vancouverites behind the bid with promises of social sustainability, and then hope we forget about it when the circus comes to town.

Vancouver 2010 Anti-Olympic mascot Bitey the Bedbug. Photo by Lotus Johnson.

On January 11, a coalition of advocates in Vancouver’s downtown eastside voiced a cheeky cry for Stephen Harper to prorogue the upcoming 2010 Winter Games. Though more marketing ploy than genuine call to action, the move is nonetheless a signal of things to come. In the few remaining days before the Olympic torch arrives in Vancouver, protestors have vowed to ramp up anti-Olympic activity. And, of course, the IOC, VANOC and even the City of Vancouver will be doing whatever they can to stop them.

But just as the call to prorogue packs more bark than bite, Olympics protests scheduled for the lead up to—and during—the Games will likely amount to little more than well-meaning disruptions. The window for real change on anything Olympics-related closed a long time ago, and Vancouver’s infuriating “Olympic Bylaws” make doing anything remotely radical prohibitive. The spectacle that comes with the Olympics offers an important opportunity to raise awareness for the plight of Canada’s poorest postal code, Native land claims and the egregiously irresponsible use of public dollars that is the 2010 Games—but grassroots advocates already need to start looking to the future. Yes, the Olympics is here now. But what happens to that progressive momentum once the Games has come and gone?

When I spoke to the Olympic Resistance Network’s Harsha Walia in her cluttered downtown eastside office over the holidays, she called the Olympics a “social catalyst.” Activists of all stripes, with varied missions and agendas, have come together in protest. The problem, though, is that Vancouver 2010 has given birth to the organizations at the front of the anti-Olympics movement right now—No 2010, 2010 Watch and ORN—as the 16-day event comes and goes, so too will they. Other established advocacy groups have continued to champion their own causes, using the Games as a flagpole to rally around, and it is the efficacy of their efforts in the Olympics’ wake that will present a chance for actual reform.

Because the real legacy of the Games won’t be the revamped Sea-to-Sky Highway or new sports infrastructure in Richmond. And it certainly won’t be the 250 units of social housing the city has promised from the freshly constructed athletes village. The real legacy will be debt. Crippling public debt. According to 2010 Watch’s Christopher Shaw, the Olympics are quickly shaping up to be Vancouver’s very own “Big Owe.”

And that debt could put more pressure on existing grassroots groups, especially when funds are cut and the world’s eyes aren’t on Vancouver. Sport can be a powerful platform for awareness—but it also comes with a short attention span. It’ll be difficult for the organizations that have been so vocal in the run up to the Games to maintain the force of their voice once the Olympic spotlight has moved on.

However, with another large-scale sports event taking place on Canadian soil in five years—the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto—there exists a ready-made excuse to preserve the cohesion and unity of purpose the anti-Olympics movement has created. If the fervent opposition to Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics and the trepidation around Rio receiving the same Games is any indication, the public is increasingly aware that global sports competitions are not the benign, benevolent forces they’re billed to be. The world is starting to understand who really reaps the benefits and who really pays the costs. And, perhaps, that is where Olympic detractors should be looking. Perhaps that could be the 2010 Games’ “other” legacy.

City of Vancouver tells you how to shake hands.

The Olympic madness just keeps on rolling in Vancouver. It was just two weeks ago that the Vancouver Public Library was sending out helpful reminders to confiscate guest-speakers’ Telus jackets and cover Sony logos with electrical tape. But now the micromanagement has exploded to a whole new level.

Vancouver city officials this week issued a 140-page “protocol manual” for volunteers who will be interacting with foreign dignitaries during the Games. If you are a brainless incompetent who doesn’t know how to smile sincerely, stand up straight, or hold a mid-level diplomat’s umbrella properly, then this is your lucky day! CityCaucus.com originally got their paws on a copy of the guide and wrote it up, and there are some snippets of advice that are pure gold.

How to smile!

A smile denotes warmth, openness, and friendliness. Smile “gently” and with sincerity. Be careful not to overdo it. False smiles can look artificial, and never-ending smiles may invite suspicion.

Stop fidgeting!

Minimize your use of hand gestures. Using your hands to emphasize a point is fine, but overdoing it can be perceived as being too excitable or dramatic.

Avoid playing with your hair, tie, or jewelry, biting your lip, drumming fingers, unconsciously snapping the clip on a ball-point pen, and jiggling coins or keys in your pocket.

Dress to impress!

It is important to wear clothing that fits properly. Never dress in clothes that are too tight, they may make a slim person look gaunt and a large person look heavier. […] Avoid wearing short socks. If they are too short, they may show bare leg when you sit down. Wear knee-high socks or stockings that reach above the calf. Socks should match pant colour. […]  Do your [suits] have razor sharp creases all the time? Do they fit properly? If not, have them tailored. The extra expense is worth it for the increased respect your impeccable appearance earns you. Do you keep an extra [suit] within easy reach? You never know when an accident will dirty our uniforms.

… And it goes on like this, for 140 pages. Lean forward to show interest. Make eye contact but don’t stare. Wipe that creepy rictus grin off your face. Don’t tug on Barack Obama’s sleeve, or the snipers will instantly shoot you.

City hall belatedly posted the PDF of the guide online, so you can gaze into the dark heart of etiquette-insanity yourself. Now stop jangling your keys! Jack Rogge will be here any minute!

The problem with the official budget is that it excludes Olympics-related infrastructure costs, like the Sea-to-Sky Highway, despite the fact that the Games are the only reason that money’s being spent.

If we include infrastructure and other Olympics-related costs, the total bill for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics is at least $9.2 billion—although no one will know the final bill, realistically, until the games are long past. VANOC intends to recoup some of their costs selling off the Athlete’s Village after the Games end—but the recession and subsequent tanking of Vancouver’s real estate market makes that plan increasingly dubious.

Here’s our independent tally of the real cost of Vancouver 2010:

Christopher Shaw. Photo by Flickr user The Blackbird. Used with permission.

Christopher Shaw’s day job is professor of ophthalmology at the University of British Columbia, but since Vancouver launched its bid for the Olympics more and more of his time has been spent campaigning against the Games—first as the founder of No Games 2010 and now as lead spokesperson for 2010 Watch. Shaw’s book, Five Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games, argues that those responsible for bringing the Olympics to town are those with the greatest financial stake in it: the developers and realtors who profit from the Olympic infrastructure. Far from being about sports, Shaw claims that the true pillars of the Olympic Games are dodgy real estate deals, huge profits for a select few, and a really big bill for everybody else once the Games have left town.

This: You just came back from the torch ceremony. How did that go?

Shaw: From my perspective, I thought it was pretty lame but then I’m pretty jaded. For me, it’s sort of offensive on top of everything else that you have what can only be described as a Nazi propaganda tool being run through the streets as if it’s brotherhood and friendship and kittens and puppies and rainbows. Commentators weren’t recognizing it. They were saying the torch goes back to Ancient Greece, but it doesn’t; it goes back to Germany in 1936. They invented the torch as a propaganda tool and, ironically, ran it through many of the countries they were later to invade.

This: How did you first come to oppose the Olympic Games?

Shaw: I first came to be an opponent back in 2002. I had heard that Vancouver was being shortlisted and when I saw people lining up in favour of the bid, that instantly made me suspicious, because when you see the ostensible political left and right joining forces it’s either something really good or something else is going on. I thought, “Maybe this demands a little more scrutiny.” I did a commentary for the CBC thinking that would be my one shot to say, “It’s not financially what you think it is.” Then it just blossomed, and when Vancouver was shortlisted and turned in their bid book, I began to devote more scrutiny to the whole thing and started No Games 2010, which, once the Games had been awarded, defaulted into a watchdog role.

This: What is 2010 Watch’s goal?

Shaw: The best we can achieve is making the running of the Games very painful with the purpose of drawing attention to things that need to be addressed, like poverty and homelessness, and educate other cities so that if they are thinking of going down this path they have the information, which we did not. The other thing is that we hope through our lawsuit to strengthen the charter. The municipal and provincial laws against ambush marketing are violations of our charter freedom of speech, and we hope to strike them down.

This: Tell me more about that lawsuit.

Shaw: The city passed an Olympic and Paralympic signage bylaw in July, and the province has recently — in a bill before the legislature called Bill 13—expanded the powers of Vancouver, Whistler, and Richmond to enforce an anti-marketing bylaw. The city of Vancouver maintains in their bylaw that you cannot go into so-called celebratory zones with a sign that has a stick on it, because presumably it could be used as a weapon. You can’t pass out leaflets, you can’t have a voice amplification device. You can’t demonstrate, in other words.

This: Part of your book is about the people who were responsible for bringing the Games to Vancouver, and their own financial stake in that outcome. Who was involved with the initial bid?

Shaw: The initial bid was mostly realtors, and then they handed off the Bid Society to [real estate developer] Jack Poole’s Bid Corporation, which was stuffed with developers, realtors, and a few athletes for cosmetic reasons.

This: Who is getting rich from the Vancouver Games?

Shaw: Well, the developers do, and certainly the high-end hotel sector does okay. Anybody near a celebratory zone as well; it’s all the people outside those zones who are getting the shaft. People won’t be able to get to them, they won’t be able to get their deliveries, traffic will be massively disrupted. If you’re a small restaurant away from the main area, you’re going to find it hard to continue your business.

This: Will the government injecting money into these big development projects have a trickle-down effect on the rest of the economy though?

Shaw: That’s the theory; it just turns out not to be true. In a number of Games it’s like an Obama stimulus project: if you throw in enough money you’ll get this runoff effect. And to some extent that’s true—but not with the kind of things they end up building. For example, if they said, “We have $6 billion we don’t know what to do with, so we’ll build hospitals and schools,” they generate outcomes everyone uses and permanent jobs. But building a luge run just doesn’t do that, or any of the special sporting facilities. It does during the building of it, but then it ends. All the construction projects are done now so it’s demonstrably both here, and in London, not a long-term economic stimulus.

This: Who are the biggest losers in the Games?

Shaw: You and me, and our kids and our grandkids. This is going to be the Big Owe: we’re going to be paying this for 30 years. The Olympic adventure has cost Vancouver a considerable amount of money, and some of it will never come back. The operating budget is a $60-million deficit, and there’s no way the city can keep the 250 units [of the Athlete’s Village] that were going to be social housing. They have to sell them. Basically, the province is paying for Vancouver’s party.

This: One number that’s still unknown is the security cost. What’s the current estimate?

Shaw: The current number is $900 million. I suspect that’s a vast underestimate, but the problem is we’ll never know because they routinely hide the number. The newest trick with security things at the federal level is to walk it into the privy council and all of a sudden it gets stamps with a 30-year exclusion, and getting to the bottom of that is going to be a problem. The province is equally squirrelly. I just requested some email communications between [B.C. Finance Minister] Colin Hansen and Annette Antoniak, the former secretariat to the Olympic Games for the province, and much of it is censored or excluded based on half a dozen exclusivity loopholes in legislation. So $900 million would probably be a low-end estimate. The last three Games were well over a billion. Athens was $1.5 billion. London, who knows?

This: And where’s the money coming from?

Shaw: Well, from three levels. Of course city taxpayers for policing. The rest of it falls supposedly on the provincial and federal government. That’s probably true for things like the RCMP, although the province is still pretending $175 million is correct, which it’s not.

This: There are some things that are odd about the Games’ organizing body, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), such as not paying taxes. How do they swing that?

Shaw: They swing it because they make it part of the contract with the city that they have to be exempt from any kind of taxes in the country where the Games are held. They somehow managed to convince the Swiss government that they are a nonprofit organization, and nonprofits don’t pay taxes. Also, nonprofits don’t get audited, so the IOC sails through life with no one looking over their shoulder. They are a law unto themselves. The IOC also dictates whether categories of people can exercise their equality rights. The IOC does not have ski jumping for women, and a number of woman ski jumpers sued the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) saying that, because of the Charter, if you’re putting on a ski jumping event for men, there has to be one for women. VANOC claimed they were unable to do anything about it because they were a subsidiary of the IOC, and the IOC could dictate how the events were going to occur. The judge said that it may be true that this is unequal, but that there was nothing he could do. That was a ruling that essentially weakened the Charter.

This: Another issue is the Native land claims. Is Native land being co-opted for the Games?

Shaw: Native land has been co-opted for the Games. First Nations hosts did not have anywhere near consensus. In St’at’imc areas definitely most people were against it and the band leadership went ahead anyway, and money changed hands that went to the leadership. Then of course there are the co-opted Aboriginal symbols and culture: it’s convenient to use Indigenous cultures for cute things like mascots, without doing anything about the problems of those societies, because tourists think the Natives are cute and fuzzy. We can have them dance for tourists, but God forbid we get them decent job prospects or get their kids into decent schools or recognize their sovereign claims. There are a lot of words about how inclusive the Games are meant to be, but the reality is very thin.

This: Do you think that despite all the expense and scandal the Games are still valuable as a celebration of sporting excellence?

Shaw: The Olympics are ostensibly about competition at the highest level, better understanding among people, and the world coming together to play beach volleyball. To some extent I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t think it’s unique. When I go to neuroscience conferences I sit down and chat with people from all over the world. I don’t think the Olympics is the only way countries get together, and the Olympic Truce is nonsense. A few months back someone asked [Olympics CEO] John Furlong to ask if the Canadian government would seek a truce with the Taliban during the Games and Furlong said it wasn’t his business, and the government wouldn’t even think about it.

This: Are we seeing the same patterns for the London Games as in Vancouver?

Shaw: Yes, absolutely everything’s the same. The cost overruns may be even worse, the security costs, the massive deceit about what’s going to happen. They are already cannibalizing money from arts and culture to pay for cost overruns. Security is going to be a nightmare because they’ve chosen for the Athletes’ Village location an immigrant population, and it’s going to be surrounded by a lot of these people. So they’ve parked it in an area they’re terrified of.

This: What is the Olympics going to mean for homeless people in Vancouver?

Shaw: I think they’ll be pushed further and further out of the downtown core. They will be continue to be marginalized and a lot of them will find it very hard to move around and live their lives during the Games because police are going to be shuffling them around. I think impacts will be huge and governments at all levels will say, “We’d love to help but we are now in deficit,” without actually blaming it on the Olympics. Any future solution will be pushed further down the line, and I think people in the streets in 2009 will be on the streets in 2012, and it’ll all be traced back to governments claiming they can’t afford to do anything. I think that will be the legacy for them.

This: Do you think the Games are salvageable? Is there a way to rein them in and make them the simple sporting festival they used to be?

Shaw: Yeah, there is. Get the IOC out of the picture and put it in the hands of the athletes, and have the athletes negotiate with communities. Or park it in one place and don’t move it. If it came back to the same city that had paid for the infrastructure and absorbed the cost it might actually make some money. But that would fly in the face of the real purpose, which is to generate money for the IOC. Why would they give up this golden goose? I’m also not all that sure that the Olympics hasn’t gone past its best-before date. I’m not sure any kind of mega-events, given global warming and given the costs, are even reasonable anymore. Someone said recently that Rio in 2016 might be one of the last Games. They’re going to bankrupt their city, they’re facing ferocious problems in their slums, and it might finally be the message that it’s just not doable anymore.

[This article originally said Chris Shaw was an assistant professor at UBC. He is, in fact, a full professor. We regret the error.]