Category Archives: Olympic Games

British Columbia, Corporations, Democracy, Executive Overdrive, Neoliberal Economics, Olympic Games, Privatization, Transit, Vancouver

Canada Line P3: More Lies

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It was surreal hearing about the block party on Cambie Street on the weekend when “thousands of pedestrians took to the street to celebrate the completion of the Canada Line.” Was it designed by TransLink to keep the Cambie merchants from starting any more lawsuits?

Celebrating the completion of the Canada Line? Right.

As many have remarked all over the net, I agree that it is still like driving on the moon. This morning the workers were professional and smiling as always, butI waited 15 minutes to get through Cambie and 12th because–surprise–there was a massive crevasse in the middle of the intersection with lanes shifted all over the place. I guess they aren’t really done, hey?

But it sure sounds good during an election campaign to have a big sidewalk sale after “declaring” the construction complete. I remember when George W. Bush got a ride in a fighter plane onto an aircraft carrier to declare Mission Accomplished in Iraq after about 9 minutes of the whole thing. When politicians say something is finished, check to see if an election is on or imminent. Then check for your wallet.

But to add to the miserable lies you only need to drive to Cambie and 49th to see the huge “Complete” sign up on the sign describing the construction of the station there. The huge yellow fence, 9 workers and busy activity make me think “complete” is yet another lie.

Remember the tunnel they were supposed to bore under Cambie Street  instead of doing cut and cover? Remember that the new TransLink board is not accountable to anyone, they were appointed by a pro-business search committee created by Gordon Campbell, and they are spending billions of dollars of our municipal taxes, but our municipal politicians have no authority over them because taxation without representation is Gordon Campbell’s way!

Critical thinking should translate to the ballot boxes on May 12.

Oh, and if you are busy that day or don’t like lines, simply vote in advance like I’m going to do. Every riding has a place open from 8am-8pm from Wednesday, May 6 to Saturday, May 9 for advance voting. And the best part is that you don’t have to have a “reason” why you can’t vote on May 12th to vote early.

So enjoy and let’s ge t rid of Gordon Campbell for good.

Activism, British Columbia, Class War, Corporations, Democracy, Executive Overdrive, Imperialism, Olympic Games, Soft Fascism, Vancouver

VANOC’s Olympic-Sized Paranoia and Belligerence

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Surrey man, 73, gets police visit after writing Vanoc

“These are Gestapo tactics, and nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to stop me from speaking my mind.”

“The instant questions that arise are around free expression. And then quite apart from the legal niceties, the issue of a journalist picking up on this and it blowing up in their face,” said Dave Harris, the director of international and terrorist intelligence programs for Insignis Strategic Research.

via Surrey man, 73, gets police visit after writing Vanoc.

Well, now I just want to start writing VANOC with all my concerns about the Olympics to see how long it takes for the cops to knock on my door.

This is the shape of things to come leading up to the Olympics and afterwards if any of this nonsense becomes part of our permanent security society.

Dave Harris’ idea that a journalist may run with this and it will blow up in VANOC’s face is a good one, but probably quite unrealistic. VANOC exists in its own universe, unaccountable to anyone, free from reality checks, immersed in its own self-importance and paranoia. They don’t give a crap what anyone thinks of them enough to change anything.

My favourite comment in the article:

The more serious threat is that I could send VANOC a threatening letter and put my neighbour’s address on it. Now that would be mayhem.

Activism, British Columbia, Class War, Executive Overdrive, Justice, Olympic Games, Soft Fascism, Transit, Vancouver

TransLink Police Harassment: The Olympics are Coming So Get Used to It

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Know Your Rights | Megaphone.

Watch this and learn!

Know your rights, carry video phones/cams, question authorities. Call them on abusive behaviour.

Watch the spread of CCTV in the city.

Watch how things tighten up as the Olympics approach.

Support the BC Civil Liberties Association.

Remember, public servants serve the public.

British Columbia, Class War, COPE, Democracy, Olympic Games, Poverty, Soft Fascism, Technology, Vancouver, Vision Vancouver

Olympics Bring CCTV, Not Solutions for the Homeless

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David Eby, from BC Civil Liberties, told the COPE AGM on Sunday of his concerns about the Olympics not so much being a lever for solving homelessness, but an excuse for a reduction in civil rights.

It seems he got it right.

When the provincial government floats examples like the Bard on the Beach as being a place for CCTV, to the surprise of the Bard organizers’ reflection that theirs has never been an event worthy of surveillance, we know this is just spin.

Despite written assurance, several councillors including COPE Coun. Ellen Woodsworth–the lone dissenting vote on council–raised concerns about the “temporary” nature of the CCTV plan and the potential erosion of civil liberties.

…

But last Friday’s provincial government press release told a starkly different tale.

Vancouver, it read, will receive $400,000 for a “re-deployable CCTV unit for special events and emergencies.”

via City admits surveillance cameras here to stay.

Activism, British Columbia, Canada, Class War, Consumerism, Corporations, Economics, Executive Overdrive, First Nations, Media, Mexico, Neoliberal Economics, Olympic Games, Poverty, Racism, Society, Vancouver

The Unanticipated Pricetag of Being an Olympic Corporate Sponsor

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The Canadian Press: Threats against Olympic sponsors worry security officials.

They should be worried! I don’t know if they need to be $1b worried, but if you do the math, there is earned concern:

((The Olympics corporate welfare program) + (obscene reductions in government spending for human beings) + (radical and radicalized groups who object to the billions wasted on this spectacle, and what in our culture it has steamrollered) + (sponsors and government groups that flaunt their glee in the faces of those suffering) + (an opportunity to capture attention on a global scale)) x (an unpredictable economic depression [ooops, Great Recession]) = a perfect storm of wariness.

And while the CBC recently reported that the carnage that has become the lower mainland in the last 2 months is likely the playing out of choked distribution points in the Mexican drug war, the climate of fatal violence in and around Vancouver increases the likelihood of radicalized responses to the Olympics.

And if Gordon Campbell gets re-elected [by the way…did you know that Gordon Campbell hates you?] then we should all expect things to ramp up considerably once he implements his crowning agenda buoyed by being elected a third time!

— —

Threats against Olympic sponsors worry security officials

OTTAWA — Possible threats against sponsors of next year’s Vancouver Olympics have federal security agents wringing their hands over “extremist elements,” a newly released intelligence report reveals.

The report by the government’s threat assessment centre cites vandalism of a corporate backer’s premises, theft of the Games flag, and skirmishes between protesters and police during unveiling of the Olympic countdown clock.

The Royal Bank of Canada, a key Games sponsor, “has been named specifically in anarchist and anti-Olympic Internet postings,” notes the analysis, 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics: Terrorist Threat to Vancouver Area Facilities.

Between September 2007 and last May, anarchists claimed responsibility for four attacks in which large rocks were thrown through the windows of Vancouver Royal Bank branches, says the assessment under a section titled Domestic Non-Islamist Extremist Groups.

“Extremist elements . . . have publicly stated their intent to continue acts of protest and possible violence against both the Olympics and commercial symbols they perceive to represent the 2010 Olympic Games.”

The threat assessment also looks at Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network and radicals inspired by the terrorist movement, as well as “Lone Wolf” attackers like Kimveer Gill, a gunman who killed one student and wounded 19 others at Montreal’s Dawson College.

The document was prepared last July by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, which includes representatives of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the RCMP and several other security and police agencies. A copy was recently released along with other assessments to The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

Several portions of the threat assessments, labelled For Official Use Only, were withheld from disclosure.

Chris Shaw, spokesman for Games monitoring group 2010watch, found the reports amateurish.

“This is the best they can do?” he asked.

“These guys need to get a serious grip, frankly. I think they’re really confusing legitimate political dissent, however disruptive it might be, with a threat. And it’s simply not.”

More than 5,000 athletes are expected from 80 countries at the Winter Games, to begin next February in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C.

Numerous activists, from aboriginal groups to anti-poverty fighters, oppose the Games, saying the expensive mega-event will hurt Vancouver’s poor, damage the environment and drain provincial coffers.

The cost of Games security has been pegged at $900 million, far more than the original estimate.

Organizers are depending on corporate sponsors including the Royal Bank to support and promote the Games, but their participation appears to have heightened fears they will become targets for those who claim the Olympics have come to symbolize money more than sport.

The threat assessment centre prepared two briefs last September on possible actions against the Canadian Pacific Spirit Train that travelled to Montreal from Vancouver to drum up Olympic enthusiasm.

“There have been calls to boycott companies and organizations which support or sponsor the upcoming games,” says one assessment. “Acts of vandalism, criminal mischief and trespass against sites associated to the Olympics and its sponsors have taken place and now protest action against the train is being encouraged.”

CSIS referred a request for comment to the B.C.-based integrated unit responsible for Games security. However, a unit spokesman did not return phone calls.

Shaw fears the threat assessments cold be used to justify cracking down on groups that oppose the Games.

“No one knows who threw the rocks through the (Royal Bank) windows,” he said. “Just because somebody’s posted something to some obscure blog . . . assuming that therefore you’re dealing with anti-2010 anarchist protesters, to use their term, is just absurd.

“If the police knew who’d done it, they would have arrested them, and they haven’t. So it could be anybody.”

The Royal Bank refused an interview request, but said in a statement it believes most people don’t support vandalism against sponsors, adding that the safety and security of employees, clients and suppliers are the bank’s top priorities.

“We have numerous security measures in place to protect them and will continue to assess and enhance our security procedures as required,” the bank said.

“RBC respects the right of people to express their opinions as long as it is done in a peaceful and respectful manner. We accept that there will always be critics; we would only hope that criticism will be constructive and truthful.”

Activism, British Columbia, Canada, CanWest, Class War, Conservatism, COPE, Corporations, Democracy, Economics, Journalism, Liberal Party of Canada, Media, NDP, Neoliberal Economics, NPA, Olympic Games, Poverty, Privatization, Society, Soft Fascism, Vancouver, Vision Vancouver, Work

Why Vancouver’s NPA Lost Badly Today

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Because I like to make electoral predictions, I guessed that the NPA would elect 5 people to various councils in Vancouver. It turns out I was generous. They got 4 in, unless more official results in the coming days alter that.

This doesn’t really prove that the NPA is dead. Corporate donations will keep the NPA or some future clone alive forever, regardless of the fact that the 4 NPAs elected will likely never cast a meaningful vote in the next 3 years. This is good because I’m quite tired of Ken Denike. But that’s another story. Ask me over a beer at the Public Lounge some time. Even if Kennedy Stewart were right and they were totally wiped off all councils, they’d still be back, strong as ever with their corporate cash.

Here are some of the stories that made for today’s COPE/Vision/Green win, in their order of significance:

Populism!

North American politics are populist right now. Obama, the rise in the federal NDP, the federal Liberals’ inability to raise more funds from more people than the federal NDP, and the mobilization of people rejecting apathy to join Vision Vancouver–all these show that citizens matter. The NPA is like the federal Conservatives and Liberals: complacent, corporate-friendly parties that have never felt the need to <irony>pander</irony> to human beings for money and volunteer support, while relying on corporate cash to use the media to encourage enough voters to drink their Kool-aid.

The progressive win in Vancouver is a testament to grassroots mobilization. And as much as the Republicans demeaned Obama as being a community organizer, that’s exactly what got him ahead of Hillary Clinton and into the White House, and what got the NPA machine out of Vancouver city hall.

This is also why the BC Liberals’ recent Whistler convention was demonizing the NDP all day, all the time: they’re afraid of being tied in the polls, they’re fiscal neoliberal Milton Friedman worshippers during the biggest global economic crisis in capitalism in a century, they watched Obama get elected and Harper not win a majority [despite calling the election for before the US election, knowing he’ll never get a majority after Obama wins], and they know that even with the soft fascist censorship of Bill 42, they are screwed because they are as unable to mobilize human beings to vote them into a third term in May as the NPA was in recent weeks. [Exhale. Sorry for the long sentence!]

The right always loses to mobilized progressives who get out the vote by shedding the apathy we’re lured into by the cynical right wing. And the provincial NDP just successfully ran its third dress rehearsal for the May 2009 election [working on the federal election, the 2 Vancouver by-elections and the munis]. Obama has a database of 3 million contributors. He will not be throwing that away now that he’s elected. He’ll mobilize it. The NPA and the BC and federal Liberals and Conservatives will never have that. But progressives do.

Red States, Blue States

The map of mayoral votes: can you say red states, blue states?

mayorrace2008f

OK, even with no guarantee of data quality and with some oversimplifications, if you know anything about the rich and poor in Vancouver, this map makes perfect sense. Where do the rich and/or conservative live? Yaletown, Point Grey, south of 16th and west of Main, the bedroom community/pseudo-suburb of southeast Vancouver. No surprise, all red for the NPA. Coal Harbour would go NPA if it weren’t largely filled with empty condos owned by thousands foreigners needing a Vancouver home.

Where do the not so rich or conservative, and/or working class and/or immigrants who didn’t buy their citizenship and/or young and/or single live? Everywhere else, where people outnumber the NPA voters and voted Gregor green.

The $100 Million Olympic Village Elephant

Peter Ladner and so many others commenting on the $100 million problem with loaning the Olympic Village development with our cash still don’t get it. It’s not about how certain things happen in-camera. It’s not about whether councilors were fully informed before voting. It’s not about the privacy of businesses. “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Here’s how. Stephen Harper’s sweater vest didn’t save him from demonstrating how out of touch he is with most Canadians when he said the global economic meltdown is a good time to invest in some bargains in the stock market. Heck, even the CanWest toxic waste machine is laying off 560 workers in part because of the global meltdown and their share price dropping 90% this year. They’re sure a bargain, but the better bargain will be in watching them implode so that we can dilute the corporate concentration of media in Vancouver and Canada with more competition and less autocratic control of news…and, frankly, better jobs for the journalists forced to work for the Aspers.

But the $100 million problem is about how the International Olympic Committee and VANOC are not transparent organizations. They are secret, above democracy, and the IOC is even above countries. They’re designed to be unaccountable to us even though they are spending billions of dollars of our tax money while people die in the streets and on surgery waiting lists. Shameful.

Ladner is so out of touch: “It’s completely irresponsible and ridiculous to think that we could do all this in public and still protect the taxpayer….Why would the Olympics be different? The scope is bigger but the framework of the deal is the same. The city does this stuff all the time — it has done this for years.” But when you mix this repulsion with the secrecy of the Olympics oligarchy, you get one pissed off electorate. Whoops.

And he doesn’t even get the irony about how little the taxpayer is being protected in any of this Olympics deal anyway. The solution would have been to explain how in-camera works, then come out and say that when it’s out of in-camera, they’ll explain to people all the details. No, wait. They can’t do that because of all the Olympics secrecy. That’s the bigger whoops. Like it or not, the city is symbiotically embroiled in the grand, global secrecy regime of the Olympics. Watch your wallets, folks.

Plumping

Ellen Woodsworth was elected in a very small part from plumping. Plumping works. Some COPE supporters who were frustrated by the nature of the deal with Vision and Green–and others–voted for only COPE members and not for others on the slate from Vision. Ellen Woodsworth got elected to the last city council spot by 1023 votes over Kashmir Dhaliwal [the only Vision candidate for any council to not get elected] as of 10:24pm Saturday night. I doubt all those votes were from people voting for her and avoiding voting for Vision candidates to keep one or more of them from getting more votes than her. But with not too different arithmetic, the plumpers would have made the difference.

Privatized Police

Korina Houghton didn’t get elected to city council for the NPA even though she had a full-page ad in 24hrs on Friday. Part of her plan was to “combat crime through continued support of the ambassador program” meaning the Downtown Ambassadors, the partially city-funded, private pretend cops designed to criminalize the <irony>unsightly</irony> people from business areas. If 11,300 more voters actually wanted a private police force created by business owners and not transparently accountable to the public despite their public funding, she would have beaten Ellen Woodsworth for the 10th spot on council. Thankfully those 11,300 people don’t exist. And while we’re at it, let’s de-fang the Ambassadors and get them back to helping tourists get from the art gallery back to the cruise ship terminal. And I’ll leave out all that business about Kanman Wong’s campaign literature saying one thing in Chinese and another in English. He’s had his political career maimed enough already…remember David Emerson?

British Columbia, Class War, Democracy, Justice, Neoliberal Economics, Olympic Games, Society, Vancouver, Work

Sam’s Strike: The Arrogance of the Man and “The Man”

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It is clear to me that Sam’s Strike is all about the Vancouver mayor’s deluded sense of autocracy [see below].

While other municipalities are being lined up to support Vancouver’s mean-spirited refusal to bargain in good faith, we wait to watch how long Sam can go thinking that the world will actually revolve around him and his idea that through his immense, sheer will, thousands of people who are actually committed to building community will crack under his might and give in to his petty demands.

His mayoralty is a shame.

Vancouver is the only city in Canada that has had three strikes in the last decade. In a strong economy, to not reward public workers, but instead to demand job insecurity and a contract term to expire days after the Olympics ends is just plain mean. It’s also representative of the grand golden straitjacket of neoliberalism that erodes the social fabric we’ve spent generations building.

Talks with CUPE 15 break down, city fails again to bargain worker issues

[July 28, 2007 08:53 PM]

VANCOUVER – CUPE 15, the union representing striking Vancouver inside workers, returned to the bargaining table yesterday at 9:30 a.m. tabling a 5 year package that addressed Mayor Sullivan’s concern about labour stability through the Olympics, with an understanding that the city was prepared to deal with issues that were also important to the union.

Despite this CUPE 15 movement, the City of Vancouver once again refused to bargain and spent less than 2 hours and 22 minutes over a period of two full days speaking with the union. The rest of the time, the city committee “caucused” while union negotiators sat and waited.

“We knew something was wrong when we arrived at the table and the City of Vancouver did not even have their two top decision makers in the room or in the building,” says CUPE 15 president, Paul Faoro. “You would have thought that with a strike coming into its second week, civic services at a halt and nearly 5,500 Vancouver city workers on the street, that General Manager Mike Zora and City Manager Judy Rogers would have made it a priority to attend and negotiate a settlement. What else could be more important?”

“There is one thing I give the city credit for,” says Faoro. “Consistency. The City of Vancouver has consistently failed to bargain and continues to frustrate the process to this day.”

CUPE 15 presented a complete written package to the city for negotiation on Friday morning. The city refused to respond in writing to the proposal.

“Frankly, we have had enough of this circus, and we suspect the public has had enough too. What is it going to take for the city to realize that manipulation and game-playing is not going to bring about a collective agreement?” says Faoro. “How much does the public have to be inconvenienced and how long do our members have to walk the picket-line without a paycheque, unable to provide the services they are proud to deliver to the residents of Vancouver?”

CUPE 15’s chief negotiator, Keith Graham, says the city is still holding onto their “final offer”, tabled on July 9th, 2007. This is the same offer that union members voted down by an overwhelming 89% because it had takeaways and failed to address issues of importance to the union, like job security (no-contracting out language), improvements for auxiliaries, whistleblower protection and harassment resolution language.

Description of major CUPE 15 issues:
Contrary to common belief, CUPE 15’s current collective agreement has no language in it that protects Vancouver’s inside workers from contracting out. At any moment, the city of Vancouver can outsource whatever services they choose, eliminating jobs and compromising the quality and stability of public services. It is for this reason that CUPE 15’s primary concern is to negotiate language that provides them with job security through the term of the agreement.

“We recognize that is it reasonable for the city of Vancouver to secure labour stability through the Olympics, but it is also reasonable for city workers to seek job security,” says Faoro. “Mayor Sullivan and his management staff have given us no reason to trust that they won’t just contract out our jobs one-by-one over the next 5-years.”

Another major issue that the union would like to see addressed is improvements for auxiliary workers, whom have no right to be scheduled by seniority, no benefits, no statutory holiday pay and have gone from temporary and occasional work relief to a massive under-compensated labour pool. In parks, for instance, two-thirds of the workforce is made up of “auxiliary workers” who are kept in this position for years and years.

CUPE 15 would like to see more of these jobs converted into full-time jobs with benefits and negotiate improvements for remaining auxiliaries that include scheduling by seniority. Right now, management can and does decide to call into work an auxiliary with less than a day on the job over an auxiliary worker with 14 years service with the city.

The union has also made it a priority at the bargaining table to negotiate harassment resolution language and whistleblower protection – contract language that protects workers from discipline and/or job loss when they speak out on an issue of public concern, like water safety, equipment maintenance, safety procedures, etc.

Union package to city of Vancouver, July 27, 2007:

Using the contract ratified in Richmond as a starting point, CUPE 15 tabled a wage increase of 21 percent over 5 years that they clearly stated was negotiable. The package also included proposed benefit improvements and the above-mentioned priorities.

The city claimed that the union’s package amounted to a total cost of 30 percent and was not “affordable and reasonable”. Faoro says the city’s calculation is more “phantom costing” and just an excuse not to begin negotiations in earnest.

“It is frustrating to be at the bargaining table with people who clearly do not understand or are pretending not to understand how negotiations work,” says Faoro. “The idea is both sides present their position and you end up somewhere in between.”

Robin Jones, CUPE National representative and chief negotiator for CUPE 394 and CUPE 718,
the two Richmond locals that ratified a deal last week is available to comment to the media on the total cost of his committee’s initial proposal to the city, which he says began at about 40% cost to the city of Richmond.

“We asked for almost 12 benefit improvements, we agreed to only two in the end, glasses and dietician services. We asked for a $2 an hour shift differential, we agreed to only $1 an hour in the end. We asked for $1.50 an hour dirty pay, we agreed to 75 cents, we asked for 100 percent benefit coverage and we ended up with only 80 percent in the end and the list goes on,” says Jones. “That’s how negotiations work and today we have a signed collective agreement and both sides are happy. But you can’t get there if one party is not willing to negotiate.”

CUPE 15 represents Vancouver’s 2,500 inside city workers who normally work at city, parks, Ray-Cam, and Britannia Community Centre.

Olympic Games, Politics

Vanoc, the Whore

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I’m not at all surprised that Vanoc, the Vancouver 2010 Olympics Committee has whored itself with McDonald’s by endorsing their program to indoctrinate impressionable pre-pubescents through its new “nutrition” and “fitness” presentations in BC elementary schools.

First of all, globally and locally, McDonald’s exploits minors as workers. They contribute to the destruction of the environment with their beef heavy menu. Their food is unhealthy, although marketing has told them to act more healthy with more healthy menu items lately. Their advertising preys on children’s lack of critical thinking capacity to guilt or nag their parents into consuming garbage food [sic] at McDonald’s.

A whoring organization by nature, Vanoc is in charge of exploiting the Olympics for corporate sponsorship. Their goal is not to keep the advertising pollution of corporations out of public schools. Their goal is not to encourage healthy lifestyles or else they wouldn’t even accept McDonald’s as an official Olympic sponsor. And their goal is not to keep corporate funding crutches out of schools, crutches that justify further government cuts to education.

So, as an official, Olympic sponsor, McDonald’s has vegetabled up its menu and approached the Vanoc whore to become sanctioned as a presentation provider in public schools. The fact that Vanoc reviewed McDonald’s program and approved it as an appropriate sponsor to present the Olympic message is disgusting to me. The true Olympic message is not about the billions in corporate sponsorship or the facilitation of branding children with corporate marketing and funding. That’s why Vanoc is a whore.

The fact that Vanoc says McDonald’s actually providing nutritional information of their “food” [sic] is a part of “offering healthier food choices” is sickening to me. Knowing what kind of heart attack inducing garbage is in a Big Mac makes the burger no more healthy. The only rational choice upon reading what is in the Big Mac is to not eat it.

But in the end, Vanoc, the whore, is encouraged merely by McDonald’s insufficient and incremental desire to be less toxic an entity. They fully support the fact that McDonald’s is “really changing their image.” This implies they’re fully aware of McDonald’s sour image. This also means that by trying to change, really trying, McDonald’s has earned the Vanoc sanction as more leverage for McDonald’s to get into schools–a place where they would love to permanently nest. And beyond the Vanoc seal of approval to go into schools, McDonald’s bribes schools with up to $500 in sports equipment for the ability to turn schools into pimps of their children’s brains.

But yes, since market research tells McDonald’s to offer more vegetables in their menu does not mean they care to really change beyond what local market conditions inspire? What kind of vegetarian menu options are there in McDonald’s restaurant in the Texas and Alberta beef belts?

But in the end, McDonald’s, like any other corporation that preys on children, wants unlimited access to the public education system. McDonald’s “other” program mentioned below does pre- and post-tests of children’s fitness levels throughout the school year. What an amazing concept. The PE teachers of BC should think about that as a basic way of evaluating children’s fitness improvement. McDonald’s has sure come up with a wonderful new educational program here. Maybe they should actually run BC’s PE programs. Except for the fact that the first thing that a PE teacher thinks of to evaluate students’ fitness level is precisely what that sexy McDonald’s program offers.

So, whore away, Vanoc and McDonald’s, but don’t expect people in the school system to roll over to your bribes. Even though there are enough neoliberal, greedy, unimaginative or just plain stupid school principals and staff committees around, more and more educational stakeholders are catching on to your whoring game.

Ronald McDonald fronts 2010 Olympic fitness pitch

Darah Hansen
Vancouver Sun

Monday, June 05, 2006

Ronald McDonald — the corporate frontman for fast-food giant McDonald’s Restaurants — is visiting elementary school children across the province to deliver a message of nutrition and fitness on behalf of the 2010 Olympics.

“The focus is not on french fries and burgers, but on making healthy food choices, working hard and being fit,” said Renee Smith-Valade, spokeswoman for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games.

“We’re fully supportive of it,” she said.

The Go Active Canada interactive school show is one of two national fitness and nutrition programs being offered to elementary schools by McDonald’s Canada, a top Olympic sponsor. The programs are only brought into schools upon the schools’ invitation.

McDonald’s spokesman Chris Stannell said that under the interactive program, Ronald McDonald is visiting elementary schools to “offer and promote the idea of leading a balanced, active lifestyle.”

The presentation features video clips from Olympic athletes, such as champion diver Alexandre Despatie, who deliver personal messages on the importance of nutrition and fitness.

“We’ve really had tremendous positive responses from a number of principals, teachers and parents who are impressed with the way we carry out the program,” Stannell said. “It’s really focused on physical fitness and not Mcdonald’s.”

McDonald’s Canada also offers a fitness challenge to schools through a second program, in which participating students are tested on a series of six exercises in the fall and retested in the spring, aiming for an overall improvement in their fitness levels. Participating schools can earn up to $500 in sports equipment.

Stannell said the programs reflect McDonald’s dedication to “being part of the solution to health and wellness today.”

Not everyone is as pleased with the company’s involvement in schools.

Michelle Morton, whose 10-year-old daughter attends an elementary school in Squamish, said she was appalled to hear of Ronald McDonald’s appearance last week at two local schools in conjunction with the Olympic Games.

“Since when did the Olympics equal McDonald’s?” said Morton, who questioned the ethics of exposing children as young as five and six years old to McDonald’s’ corporate messages and logos.

Morton said she learned of the presentation through a friend of her daughter’s, whose own school, Mamquam elementary, is not participating in the fitness challenge.

Mamquam principal Ian Kent said his school chose not to participate because staff felt it didn’t tie in with other fitness initiatives at the school, not through any deliberate attempt to avoid the corporate connection.

He said the school was not aware of McDonald’s’ strong relationship with the program until this week, when presentations were delivered to students at Garibaldi Highlands elementary and Valleycliffe elementary.

Principals at Garibaldi Highlands and Valleycliffe did not return The Vancouver Sun’s phone calls.

Seb Amenta, principal of Stawamus elementary, however, said staff at his school felt “uncomfortable” with the McDonald’s’ connection after they attended the presentation at Garibaldi Highlands, along with approximately 55 students, in grades 2 to 7.

“My staff, when they went, said, ‘Oh, it was splashy. We couldn’t help but see the Big M everywhere,'” Amenta said.

“The sponsor was definitely visible.”

Amenta said the students who attended the presentation enjoyed it, and teachers were impressed with the overall message of fitness and good health. But, he said, schools must be extra vigilant about exposing children to corporate culture.

“Money can start to take over, and we can’t go there with our kids. They are too precious,” Amenta said.

Smith-Valade said parents can be r
eassured that Vanoc fully reviewed the program before giving its approval. She said Vanoc is satisfied McDonald’s is an appropriate sponsor to help deliver the Olympic message.

McDonald’s has worked hard in recent years to move in the direction of offering healthier food choices, including providing customers with nutritional information on the food offered, she said.

They are really changing their image, and we fully support that,” she said.

dahansen@png.canwest.com

Podcast at http://dgiVista.org/pod/2006.06.05.mp3
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