The Olympics. Here in BC where they are being hosted it’s a really hot topic. The majority of the people I’ve talked to (myself included) are not supporters of our Province hosting them.
In the northern half of the province where towns consist of miners and forestry, workers are dependent on their source of income remaining (once a mine dries up, it’s very normal for a town to become a ghost town). My city is considered the unofficial capital of the North as it is the main hub between all the highways that go North West East and South. When the Olympics were first proposed by our Premier Gordon Campbell, he cited all sorts of reasons why BC should host it. Why it would benefit the province and so forth. However, as most people here will cynically add, the North pays for a lot of the infrastructure and buildings and road projects that occur in the south. We may not have the sheer numbers of residents, but most of the money that the province makes is in the North. Anyway, the Olympics were said to incite tourism in Northern BC as a lame way to convince Northerners to get behind Campbell’s scheme for Vancouver.
The Olympics are about to get underway, and Prince George just had its torch ceremony over the weekend complete with fireworks and so forth. Downtown was disgusting to navigate through due to the high concentrations of people and cars. Most people here do NOT want the Olympics. Never did. We knew that we would have to cover the huge expense that it would be, that it would not benefit the north. Campbell got his wish and has put our province even further in debt. Where they get money from I really don’t know. However, most people know that the Olympics are the reason for the new HST tax that will be implemented this year which will cause groceries and family expenses to rise even more. Funding across the province has been cut immensely. There are 14 elementary schools that are going to being closed in my town. They had recently closed half of the ones that originally existed. All the students are going to be in conglomerate schools of k-12. These schools are ALREADY overcrowded without the added students. Where they’re going to fit in the new students will be a challenge. The education that is being provided will deteriorate as class sizes that are already larger than average will be increased further.
But that’s not my point of contention. That rests with the university I attend. It prides itself on being a “Green” University, has slogans and adds about it all over. And there are student groups that cite that the Oil Sands are a reason to resist the Olympics. What needs to be noted is that the Oil Sands reside in a completely different province (Alberta) and that they do not contribute as much waste as is continually cited by such groups. They provide work for hundreds of thousands of workers, and the supply is not going to dry up as soon as many groups have said. My father actually works in Alberta due to his plywood plant burning down two years ago. It amuses me that student groups at my University are grabbing at straws to make a correlation between anything “Green” and causes such as the Olympics. I wonder if we’re really learning anything here. Or if we just learn to stuff our heads with what we desire then go out to search for reasons to back it up
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