Protesters can spoil more than a Games bid
The voices did not punctuate or offend. Sandwiched between chants, drumming, African-American spirituals and rants against privatization and the perils of rampant capitalism, the dissent barely registered.
Mass media, cued to record the anticipated noncommittal musings of the evaluators, hoped for a spark of anger or rage from the protesters – anything with a hint of emotion, something that might suggest the fight matters.
We've got protest songs, a measured and responsible answer to the mini-Olympics that could be coming to town. The Pan Am Games barely register in people's minds. So it's little wonder that the protests opposed to the Games carry so little weight.
The protesters have one major problem: Toronto has not benefited from missing out on world's fairs and Olympic Games.
Dissidents would say the city avoided massive debts. They forget we missed out on massive infrastructure improvements.
The prevailing view is that Olympic bids and such massive efforts serve to distract a city from its priority – which is to make life better for its citizens. No mega projects, and city hall would, presumably, get its priorities right. Wrong.
John Clarke from the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty is well practised in the argument: "The record of these extravaganzas is such a horrible one, a hideous one," that the debate is one-sided. Athletes' villages built for events like Olympics and Pan Am Games result in gentrification, higher housing prices, dislocation of homeless people, social exclusion and other ills, he says.
"Hey, hey, hey ho, the Pan Am Games have got to go."
That message was particularly loud in the early 1990s, during the run-up to the bid for the 1996 Olympic Games. Bread Not Circuses was the protest group of the day, and it did not go quietly. In fact, bid leader Paul Henderson still blames the group, and the help it got from then-city councillor Jack Layton, for sabotaging Toronto's chances.
Toronto did not get the 1996 Olympics and it did not get the housing others demanded. In fact, the net effect was worse. The 1996 Games would not have given us all the housing protesters wanted. But losing the Games got us nothing.
If there is a link between the mega projects and public assets and priorities, it seems that without the catalyst of the mega projects, public investments and improvements move at a snail's pace.
Fast-forward to Toronto's bid for the 2008 Games. One of the very first projects approved by all three levels of governments, to boost Toronto's bid, was the remake of the subway platforms at Union Station. The TTC and others had been concerned for years about overcrowding at the busy station. In fact, in 1998, Year 1 of the amalgamated city, they took then-mayor Mel Lastman on a tour of Union Station to show him how potentially dangerous it had become.
But nothing happened. Until the bid for the 2008 Olympics, when money suddenly appeared from Ottawa and Queen's Park to fast-track the Union Station renovation.
Well, no Games, no Union Station subway platform fix. For years. Design concept was approved in 2004. Artwork, 2008. Tender is set for November. Completion? 2014. Without the catalyst of the Games, the project has languished. Nothing moves municipal or provincial or federal agendas along quicker than an international deadline.
Royson James usually appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment