Two thumbs down to the Olympics

In the early days, Montifax was quite willing to to come out either in favour of something or as opposed to something. One example of this that sticks in my mind was Montifax's position that Avenue du Parc should not have had its name changed (in the end the name was not changed). For one reason or another, this practice seems to have fallen off a little over the past few years. Fortunately, this morning, I encountered something that disgusted both Neil and I and has lead me to revive the practice.

On the front page of today's print edition of the Globe and Mail there is a picture of an Olympic torch bearer running through the House of Commons, with MPs present, while carrying a lit torch. Not only does this suggest that longstanding parliamentary rules regarding strangers on the floor of the House were broken for the torch bearer, it also suggests an alarming disregard for safety (particularly in a set of buildings that have already had at least one run-in with fire). Generally torches inside aren't a particularly good idea. The incredible arrogance demonstrated by Olympic organizers in this instance has allowed me to feel relatively confident that I am correct in firmly planting Montifax in the anti-Vancouver 2010 Olympics camp.

To be perfectly honest, both Montifax and I had been leaning in this direction for some number of years. Not only do the Vancouver 2010 Olympics generally upset me because they are Olympics (which are generally wasteful and unpleasant), but they are also Winter Olympics (which are even more ridiculous than the Summer version). Also, for some number of years the Vancounver 2010 Olympics have been hogging an unreasonable amount of space in newspapers and media reports (the stories are frequently about either cost overruns or female ski jumpers who have not been allowed to compete). More recently, this media hogging has been really stepped up in the context of the torch relay. At least a half-page has been devoted to this non-story by the Globe and Mail since it started, and I presume that this will continue until the Olympics start in 2010.

Though this isn't my primary concern (the newspaper issue is), it seems quite clear that this event is likely to be incredibly environmentally unfriendly. Not only are thousands and thousands of athletes and tourists going to fly to Vancouver, but they have been taking greenhouse gas emitting torches to almost every corner of Canada for the past number of weeks. It is though they are making a show of their environmental unfriendliness.

And while I have nothing against businesses making money, I am not a particularly big fan of foreign broadcasters making millions on the backs of Canadian tax payers (and other equivalent situations). While I don't have the precise numbers in front of me, I really don't see how this will work out as a net positive for Canada in a financial sense in the end.

It is probably a little too late for our editorial position really to change much of anything, but it seemed worth putting out there, if only for educational purposes.