By Clare Ogilvie
The Conservative government has appointed three new members to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Parlaympic Organizing Committee’s board of directors.
They are Peter Brown, chair and CEO of Canaccord Capital Corp, Carol Stephenson, a former corporate executive and now dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, and Jacques Gauthier, a Montreal lawyer and senior vice-president and COO at Kruger Inc, a private energy company.
The new board members replace Liberal appointments made by former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 2003. They were Chrétien’s daughter France Chrétien Desmarais, Tony Tennessy and Peter Dhillon.
The changes have been expected for months given there was a change in government.
On the surface it looks like the Conservatives have chosen leaders with strong business and financial backgrounds.
Earlier this year the government commissioned its own independent review of the state of the 2010 Games before agreeing to provide VANOC with an additional $55 million for venue construction.
Brown, Stephenson and Gauthier will take up their new positions Nov. 15.
“The three new appointees have significant expertise in leading complex projects and will play a key role in providing the Vancouver Organizing Committee with strategic and financial advice,” said David Emerson, the federal minister responsible for the Games.
VANOC is governed by a 20-member board headed by chairman Jack Poole, who is elected by the other members. There are several bodies represented on the board, including seven representatives of the Canadian Olympic Committee, two each from the City of Vancouver and the Resort Municipality of Whistler, three from the three First Nations bands on whose lands the Games will be staged, one from the Canadian Paralympic Committee and three each from the provincial and federal governments.
