I’ve always disliked the Olympics. Sure, I usually dislike anything that most people like. I admit that. However, in this case, I’m not alone in my aversion. In fact, aversion to the Olympics is so common that it has its own term. Yup, “Olympic aversion.”
Olympic aversion is so strong that, according to one news article I read, thousands of travellers are expected to avoid the Vancouver area for months before and after the 2010 Olympics. This is not just based on the fact that Olympic aversion has been well documented in past host cities. The effects are already hitting Vancouver, British Columbia and Canadian businesses. Airlines, hotels and ski resorts have reported significant decreases in business for late 2009. Hotels have seen decreases as high as 20 per cent, even though the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort got so much snow this season it opened two weeks early.
Also, at least one executive of an affected business has stated publicly that he sees no indications that people visiting the Vancouver area for the Olympics will replace dollars lost to Olympic aversion.
Affected businesses are advertising reduced prices to try to entice customers, but up to this point not even that is working. That means these businesses are serving fewer customers and receiving less money per customer. When there’s a whole globe’s worth of destinations to travel to, I suppose the idea — accurate or not — of inflated prices, long line-ups, big crowds and scant accommodation just doesn’t appeal to tourists. I can’t say I blame them.
But there’s so much more to dislike about the Olympics. According to the CBC, in June, the City of Vancouver passed a bylaw “to restrict distribution and exhibition of unapproved advertising material and signs in any Olympic area during the Games.” Of course, this law “includes an exception for celebratory signs.”
So basically, we Canadians will not be allowed to say certain things in certain places at a certain time. More specifically, we will be forbidden from expressing to foreigners our criticism of a decision our own government made. Sure, we can be as anti-Olympic as we want when we’re not near Games-goers. As far as I know, that directly violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Of course, that’s not all. According to the Vancouver Sun, in December 2008, the B.C. auditor general reported the provincial government “has not fully disclosed the risks associated with the cost and revenue projections and still refuses to include what he and two previous auditors believed should be counted as Olympic-related costs,” such as billion-dollar infrastructure expenses. Hello Olympics, goodbye responsible government.
The writer of the January 2009 article added up the expenses that she was able to find; the total was more than $6 billion. That was almost a year ago, and just the expenses that federal and provincial governments admitted to.
Nobody outside of Vancouver had a say in the decision to bring the Olympic spend-fest to Canada. Now just imagine what that $6 billion could have done for H1N1 vaccination. Or other health care. Or education. Or roads. Or the environment. Or anything useful.
And now Olympic aversion seems to be diverting away the one supposed good thing about the Olympics: tourist dollars.
Sure, international co-operation is great. Let’s all co-operate to do something like eradicating AIDS, not on throwing a giant fiscally and democratically irresponsible party.
