Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Five Ring Circus coming to town

Documentary shines a critical light on the Olympics

If it were up to Dr. Chris Shaw from 2010 Watch, he would pull the plug on the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games right now, ending what he sees as a colossal waste of money, social equity, and damage to the environment.

“Frankly, I’d like to see the Games not happen at all,” he said. “I still think there’s some possibility of that, some chance that in Vancouver the amount of resistance will make it too difficult to host the Games.”

But while Shaw admits that the Games will most likely go on as planned, he says that protests planned by advocates for the poor and First Nations will be embarrassing enough internationally to damage Canada’s reputation. And although his group may not be able to stop Vancouver 2010 from happening, he hopes a new documentary called Five Ring Circus — soon to be followed by a book of the same name — can stop Olympic developments like the proposed legacy trails in the Callaghan Valley, and serve as a cautionary tale for other cities thinking about hosting the Olympics.

“What has happened in Vancouver and other cities are the same things that will happen elsewhere. It’s both educational for people who live here in trying to understand how this all came about and why the Games are more expensive and more environmentally destructive than we were ever told, but it also reaches out to other cities.”

Five Ring Circus has been screened several times in Vancouver, and has been reviewed positively by the media there. The film will get its first Whistler public showing this Saturday, at an event hosted by the Association of Whistler Area Residents for the Environment, and the Whistler chapter of the Council of Canadians.

WORCA president Sara Jennings says AWARE is neutral on the topic of the Games, but wanted to give 2010 Watch an opportunity to tell their side of the story.

“It’s basically just for discussion, and to show the other side of the issues,” she said. “I wouldn’t say we support either side fully, but we already know one side and we want to see what the other side has to say. It should be an interesting discussion.”

AWARE has participated in Olympic planning in the past in order to have a voice at the planning table, and is still involved in some discussions relating to the environment.

According to Shaw, a professor ophthalmology and visual sciences at UBC, there are several reasons why he opposes the Games.

“First of all, it’s more expensive than we were ever told, which is something that’s just beginning to occur to people now,” he said. “Not only operating costs, but the venue construction costs, and all the infrastructure costs that go into making and winning bids.”

Shaw says costs like the $600 million Sea to Sky Highway Improvement Project are not considered part of the Games, but said that the highway was identified in the beginning as a possible obstacle to making Vancouver’s bid feasible from an International Olympic Committee perspective. He also points out that the highway is still considered an Olympic legacy in the Games’ business plan.

Although he says it’s possible that projects like the highway upgrade and SkyTrain expansion to Vancouver Airport would have happened eventually, he says the Olympics created the urgency, set the timetable, and increased the cost of those projects.

As for the economic benefits, Shaw says it’s all about opening areas up to developers.

“The important thing to realize about these bids is that it’s all about real estate, that’s what drives bid organizers,” he said, pointing to new residential developments planned along the highway and SkyTrain route. “It’s not hard to connect the dots between the bid’s supporters and the people that stand to do very well developing real estate after the Games.”

Shaw’s next biggest concern is the environment, specifically the trees cut down in the Callaghan Valley and Whistler, and the carbon produced by venue construction. Although there is a plan to make the Games carbon neutral, Shaw says the plan centres on Games transportation and omits emissions from construction.

However, if the Games were to buy credits for all carbon emissions, Shaw says the costs would likely be borne by the taxpayers and increase costs even further. According to the David Suzuki Foundation, the Games will have a carbon footprint of 3.5 megatonnes, which is equal to five per cent of B.C.’s annual output.

Cutting down trees also increasing the carbon footprint of the Games by removing natural carbon sinks. Shaw’s group is using estimates by the Western Canada Wilderness Society that more than 40,000 trees have already been cut down for Olympic venues — much of it for road construction into the Callaghan. With the addition of planned legacy trails in Whistler Olympic Park, Shaw says the number of trees cut could double or triple.

Security is also high on Shaw’s list of concerns, including the cost of providing it and the inconvenience that it will create for host communities.

“We have proof that the bid corporation and VANOC have been lying about the cost of security since 2002,” he said. “We have documents from the RCMP that prove this, because the RCMP doesn’t want to be blamed for what the actual costs will be. The number that has been thrown around is $175 million, which is patently absurd because the costs will be similar to Torino, where it was more like $1.4 billion.”

With the real costs of security factored in, as well as the long term costs associated with the Sea to Sky Highway Project, land deals, SkyTrain expansion, and Vancouver Convention Centre development, 2010 Watch has estimated that the price tag for the Games will be in the neighbourhood of $6 billion, the majority of which will be provided by federal, provincial and local governments.

Which brings Shaw to his final concern about the Games — the lack of transparency and accountability. VANOC is technically a private company, and as a result is not required to open its books during or after the Games. That’s a requirement of the IOC, he says, which doesn’t open its books to anyone or pay any taxes in the jurisdictions it operates.

“There is zero accountability here,” he said. “We’ve never had talks with any level of government about the costs, or been told exactly what the costs were. We will never know where the money went or how the decisions were made, or even who had a hand in making those decisions. VANOC isn’t accountable, the IOC isn’t accountable, and our governments aren’t either. The only people accountable in the end are the taxpayers, who are on the hook for any additional costs.”

Five Ring Circus, by first time filmmaker Conrad Schmidt, covers all of these aspects of the Games and more. Shaw will be in Whistler on Saturday to make his own presentation, answer questions, and to learn more about the impact of the Games on Whistler and other Sea to Sky communities.

The film gets underway at 7:30 p.m. at the Whistler Public Library. Admission is $5 at the door.