Excerptcize

Thursday evening saw a divided panel come together for a public forum on security and civil liberties during the 2010 Olympics at the SFU Harbour Centre.  The forum was organized by the Impact on Communities Coalition and consisted of Integrated Security Unit chief Bud Mercer, Vancouver Police Department deputy chief Steve Sweeney, BC Civil Liberties Association director David Eby, Vancouver City Councilor Geoff Meegs, Pivot Legal Society attorney Laura Track, Vancouver Organizing Committee director of corporate rights and management Bill Cooper and anti-Olympics activist Alissa Westergard-Thorpe.  There was another panelist speaking from an anti-Olympics stance, but this writer did not catch her name and has not been able to find a complete speakers list online.  My apologies to her.  The forum was moderated by IOCC director Am Johal.

The panel was clearly separated into two camps: organizing and security personnel on one side and those against the Olympics due to concerns about civil liberties infringements, both against those exercising political protest and the homeless on the other.

Civil rights advocates first highlighted the history of the IOC’s desire to present a ‘clean’ image of the games and the lack of communication from VANOC to the IOC that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the law of the land and must inevitably hold sway over efforts at image and brand control.  They further argued that the passing of the city’s 2010 Olympic and Paralympic bylaw, providing officials with the power to remove messaging throughout the city, along with the more recent provincial passage of the Assistance to Shelter Act not only flout the Charter rights but fly directly in the face of the bid committee’s Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Statement.

Panelists representing different organizational facets of the games highlighted upcoming changes to the city’s Olympic bylaw they say clarify their position that actions will only be taken against commercial messaging, not political messages.  Additionally they indicated these upcoming changes will limit the scope of both the time frame for these changes in enforcement as well as the physical areas that constitute Olympic Venues where enforcement will take place.  Outside of the venues, protest would be handled “business as usual” according to deputy chief Sweeney.  Aside from these messages, Mr. Mercer and Mr. Sweeney both underlined that they are in charge of difficult exercises in logistics.  The audience was not particularly sympathetic to this point.

Should organizers insistence that only commercial messaging will be targeted for removal prove to hold true then I will be satisfied that rights to speech are being protected sufficiently.  Nonetheless the fact that it has taken this long to present clarifying language from the city on the original bylaw that was so clearly an infringement on free speech liberties is disturbing.  Smarter minds than myself have not been mollified as easily.  Chris Shaw, a UBC professor who brought forward a lawsuit in response to the cities bylaw describes the proposed changes as “more superficial than substantive” and has indicated his suit “won’t end until the civil liberties playing field for all of us gets a lot more level.”

Of more concern is the new provincial bylaw, the Assistance to Shelter Act.  Activists against this law have taken to describing it as the Olympic Kidnapping Act, and upon examination that label is not as hyperbolic as it may first appear to be.  The legislation empowers police to remove homeless people to shelters during severe weather, although cannot be made to force them inside the shelters.  Even with the addition of the HEAT shelters this city still does not have enough shelter spaces.  The legislation stipulates no conditions on where these people can be moved to; the fear being that homeless people will be rounded up during the Olympics and transported out of the downtown core to outlying areas such as Abbotsford.  History from the Atlanta games in 1996 shows this is not an outlandish scenario, especially being that the police have now been directly empowered to move this particular class of people.  The feeling of Laura Track with the Pivot Legal Society is that this law will certainly be found to be unconstitutional, but those kinds of challenges take time and will not have wended their way through the legal system before the start of the opening ceremonies.  Mr. Sweeney only briefly touched on this matter indicating that the VPD are still evaluating how they will move forward in implementing this new law.

The issues raised by the Olympics tend to raise passions in one way or another.  Personally I am a huge fan of all amateur sport and the Olympics in particular.  When I was getting ready to move to Vancouver I told friends and family that one of my reasons for choosing Vancouver over Canada’s other metropolises was my desire to be there during the games.  None of that precludes having serious concerns with potential abuses of civil rights that protect free speech and the chance that mass displacement of homeless people may take place.  Certainly the Olympics themselves are not an efficient allocation of resources.  Business forces are stronger than those that view the Olympics as being nothing but deleterious on the host city.  I do not however see hosting the games as a zero sum game.  They WILL bring in a huge amount of economic activity that will benefit the city.  A lasting improvement of infrastructure for amateur sport will also remain; an investment in sport is an investment in health.  Vancouver will also serve as a stage to the world and many more eyes will be on the city.  This has already been the case this year with the attention paid by many international news outlets to the numerous gang war murders that occurred earlier in the year.  Successful activism will hopefully see the co-opting of this expanded platform to ensure that the social problems of our city cannot be swept under the rug, for the eyes of both the world and the city itself.  The odds now being that no sustainable housing legacy will be left after the huge cost overruns at the Olympic Village is a huge disappointment.  Neither council nor the city should not let a commitment that was made to housing development in the bidding promise slip away now.

Lastly, both Mr. Sweeney and Mr. Mercer took personal offence to the fact that their histories in past protest events gone wrong (’97 Apec Summit, ‘The Riot at the Hyatt’) were cited by those opposed to the games as potential indicators of reactions security forces will have to protesters during the games.  Councillor Meegs dismissed out of hand concerns stemming from previous games, emphatically jabbing his finger into the table stating that they had nothing to do with “these games.”  Hopefully that is true.  We all shall see how true his assertion is by seeing how those wishing to voice dissent and the homeless are treated this February.  Whatever the outcome, the world will also see.  In 2009 (and 2010) our media landscape will ensure that whatever happens is known and documented in detail.

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