The anti-Olympics crowd is back in action. The Eagleridge Bluffs protesters from Canada’s richest neighbourhood squeezed in next to the anti-poverty activists from Canada’s poorest one.

And they sat beside some guys who can best be described as people who just like to complain a lot.

They spent an hour together last week heaping criticism on the 2010 Olympics. They even suggested the Games could go back to Turin for a second round. After all, Turin has all the facilities. They could just re-use them.

Cost over-runs made an easy target. Easy, because I suspect even government officials, who so blithely dismiss the possibility of over-runs in public, are privately chewing their nails.

And they talked about the impact of the Olympics on the people who live at society’s margins.

If the Olympics create an economic boom they reasoned, then property values will go sky-high. If that happens, most of the decrepit, low-rent hotels on the Downtown Eastside will be demolished to make way for swish new ones catering to a wealthier crowd.

I can buy the argument that we’d better be concerned, but not their quirky logic.

First, it’s not only the Olympics that’s creating the relentless pressure to redevelop land. It’s B.C.’s booming economy.

But hey, if the Olympics are helping to keep our economy cooking, then what’s the matter with that?

And if the economy’s in overdrive, partly because of the Olympics, then the government is raking in more taxes. So why don’t these folks figure out how to get some of that money for their social causes instead of trying to kick 2010 back to Italy?

How about spending it to replace those decrepit old hotels with decent apartments?

Most of them are awful dumps built before the First World War. Their tiny rooms are about 100 square feet.

They have no bathrooms or kitchens. Some don’t have locks on the doors. And many are in filthy, sometimes dangerous buildings infested with criminals and drug dealers who prey on residents.

And unfortunately for those that live in them, those crummy hotels house thousands of people.

Even more unfortunately, the folks who advocate for better housing want to spend their time shutting down the Olympics, while they should be figuring out how to get a big piece of the Olympic pie.

But then again, maybe someone should ask Turin if they want to do another Olympics. My guess is they’ll say no.

After all, their new rinks are probably booked up by kids’ sports teams. Their high-tech centre will already be rented out to international conferences for big money. And much of the new housing built for the Olympic village will be occupied by low- income Turinites who aren’t in any rush to move from their new digs.

Turin won’t be able to host another Olympics. All that new housing they built? It’s full.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 1st, 2006 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.