Inside the new Canada Line SkyTrain cars.

This week, I’m coming to you live and on location from Canada’s Olympic city and the place of my birth. I’m fortunate enough to be staying at my father’s apartment across the street from the athlete’s village, so I’m literally in the center of the action.

I can see the environmentally friendly generator that turns the athlete’s poo into renewable energy from my window, and the Aussie’s Boxing Kangaroo flag that had Jacques Rogge’s panties in a bunch is still flying proudly from the windows of the Australian team’s condominium. But for all the ways THIS Magazine rags on the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, (and we do rag) it seems as though these games are at least setting a new standard for one thing — accessibility.

Arriving here I got to ride what is arguably the crown jewel of the 2010 games’s legacy. For those who don’t know, The Canada Line expands the city’s SkyTrain system from downtown Vancouver into Richmond and ends at the airport.  Just having the system connect to YVR means getting into the city from the airport is leaps and bounds easier than it would otherwise be if you have an assistive device. It’s cheaper too. A wheelchair cab can run you various multiples of ten depending on where you live in the Lower Mainland, while a ride on the SkyTrain from the main terminal costs $7.00. (Although, a few extra coins than the rest of the line.) The signage at the airport and in the elevator clearly marks the path to the skywalk and into the station in big, bright yellow letters. Inside the train is where the Canada Line really earns its medal as the accessibility standard for similar systems.

In the past,  accessible spaces were usually only big enough for manual chairs to fit into and you had to flip up an existing seat in order to park inside. Now, there’s a space for bikes on one side of the train and a long space on the opposite side. It has a handrail and is designated accessible, so it can easily fit electric chairs, scooters and possibly a small all-terrain vehicle. It use to be that poles lining the centre of the cabin meant scooters and large electric chairs were forced to drive on and back off through the same door, but the train itself is wide enough that one could turn completely around in a circle without getting stuck or obstructing other passengers.

There’s only one aspect of the Canada Line that really bothers me. Thankfully, it is limited  to the airport station. The accessible gate that lets people with disabilities and people with strollers onto the platform cannot be controlled by the passenger. In an effort to control traffic, the passenger presses a button that signals a Translink employee on the other side of an intercom and they open the gate for you. Able-bodied passengers that don’t need the gate simply pass between two vertical metal poles without incident — poles that are too narrow for a large wheelchair, forcing those with disabilities to use the gate and rely on the employee.

Coming from a city where transit employees are known to sleep on the job, I can see a scenario where someone is coming home late and inevitably there’s no one on the other side of the intercom to help them. I don’t want to have to give some indifferent able-bodied union employee so much power over when and where I can go at such a crucial point in the process. I do not like to rely on people, when I think there’s a strong possibility they will let me down. I wish deeply that the aid of an employee was optional, so my freedom of movement wasn’t more restricted than other passengers, just because I needed to use the gate.

However, having people with strollers who need to use the gate may make officials much more vigilant than they would otherwise be if they were only dealing with people with disabilities. Besides, I have to remember that the Translink system has much more credibility with Vancouver’s disability community, thanks to how much they’ve done already, so I can’t automatically assume they’re going to screw it up and not be on the ball.

After all, the Olympics haven’t even started yet, and I still have many more venues to assess, including BC Place, GM Place (Canada Place) and Thunderbird Stadium. Once things have ramped up, than we will truly see how good VANOC’s accessibility plan is.

I have to point out though, over the weekend I walked without my scooter to the new Olympic Line Bombardier train, that shuttles passengers between False Creek and Granville Island, on the assumption that it wouldn’t be accessible and (oh, how jaded I’ve become) and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was. It’s nice to know there are still places in the world where officials anticipate the need, rather than react to it. I’m glad I can go home again and know accessibility doesn’t have to be a fight at every turn, it’s just second nature.

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.

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.]