“We’ve invited the world, they’re coming, and the place is a mess.” That was the tag line the CCPA gave to our BC Solutions Budget back in 2004. At the time, we argued as strongly as we could that if BC was to change the story the world would tell of us this month, we needed to get busy tackling poverty and building social housing. Sadly, that appeal went largely unheeded, until some frantic action on homelessness started up in 2007.
Over the last two years, we’ve seen the province and city make some important moves on the homelessness front. Frances Bula has a good summary of them on her blog (and the comments after her piece are very insightful too).
Most of the activity, however, as been aimed at reducing visible street homelessness (through opening new shelters), and defensive moves aimed at protecting the existing stock of low-income housing (through the provincial government’s purchases of SRO hotels). In contrast, we’ve seen very little and very slow action with respect to actually increasing the supply of new social housing.
Today saw the formal launch of Pivot’s Red Tent campaign, and the establishment of a tent city, both drawing attention to the need for more action on new social housing, and for a federal housing strategy. We’ll see what the international media makes of all this.
Which still leaves the larger question of whether the Games will produce long-term economic benefits. Much of this hinges on whether the 2010 Olympics will produce a sustained increase in tourism.
Back in 2003, a government-commissioned economic impact report by InterVistas predicted a big boost to tourism leading up to the Games. But as a more recent economic impact study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found, that did not transpire.
There will likely be a small economic boost during the Games themselves. Of course thousands of tourists, athletes and journalists have arrived, and their spending is an economic benefit. But mitigating this, thousands of local residents have chosen to flee the province, figuring now would be a good time to get out of town, and the departure of their local spending will be an economic loss. Hard to say what the net impact will be, but there will be clear winners and losers (some hotels and restaurants will be winners, while the local grocery store may see a loss).
But will there by a long-term increase in tourism? Hard to say. Depends somewhat on the weather (showing the world what this place looks like in February is always a crapshoot). If someone is a globe-trotting ski tourist, they were already well aware of Whistler long before the bid was won, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see real gains on that front.
The Games may produce a marginal increase in tourism for a few years. But in the longer term, I can’t stop wondering this – in a world wrestling with climate change and peak oil, are people really going to be traveling like this, or will rising oil prices make the cost of air travel prohibitive? I suspect the days of destination ski travel and global tourism as we’ve seen it in recent decades are numbered. Consequently, as a province and country, we need to start putting our economic development eggs in something other than the trade and tourism basket.
Paul Abbott // Jul 24, 2010 at 11:55 am
Can anyone suggest some empirical research on the economics of the Olympics that I might read?
Seth Klein // Jul 27, 2010 at 11:24 am
Hi Paul
I recommend this 2003 CCPA report by David Green: http://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/olympic-impacts
Also, make sure you read the other CCPA blog posts on the economics of the Olympics. They are all to be found here:
http://www.policynote.ca/tag/olympics/
The CCPA is also working on a final cost-benefit analysis report with economist Marvin Shaffer. But that won’t be out for some time, once we have some final numbers in.
Iglika Ivanova // Feb 22, 2010 at 11:10 pm
An article in the February issue of BC Business Magazine opens with this pertinent quote:
“You can count on three things being true with the Winter Olympics: the initial cost estimates for staging the Games will be underestimated, the Games will almost certainly lose money and organizers will claim they made a profit.
Yet all this appears to be forgotten every four years when a new city hosts the Winter Games, which on a per capita basis actually cost more to put on than their summer equivalent.”
Read more: http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/bcb/sponsored/2010-winter-games/2011/02/03/ten-debt-sentences#ixzz0gLA64hYR
Why weren’t they writing these kinds of articles back in 2003 when the bid was being considered? And if this stuff is common knowledge, then why are so many cities/countries willing to bend over backwards in order to host the Olympics?
pwlg // Feb 19, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Back in the heady days of June 2002, the editor of the Western Investor, Frank O’Brien, wrote the following:
“When Jack Poole addressed a room full of developers this spring it erased any doubts of what the 2010 Winter Olympics bid for Vancouver-Whistler is really all about.
At the risk of sounding naive, we had understood the bid was aimed at getting the games, raising Vancouver’s international profile and welcoming elite athletes to one of the world’s best skiing locations.
Wrong. The real purpose of the 2010 Olympics bid is to seduce the provincial and federal governments and long suffering taxpayers into footing a billion dollar bill to pave the path for future real estate sales. Whether the bid is successful or not is actually immaterial.
“If the Olympic bid wasn’t happening we would have to invent something,” Poole, chair of the 2010 Vancouver Bid Corp. and a noted real estate developer said in a most telling understatement.
It is hard to imagine any fantasy that fits better than the Olympics bid if you are into real estate development.
Governments have to make big-time financial commitments right away if they are going to wow the International Olympic Committee members who will be in Vancouver next February to see if we are up to snuff.
The forum delegates were told that the following agreements have to be made within months; a billion dollar expansion of the Sea-to-Sky highway to a three lane freeway; a Skytrain link from Vancouver Int’l Airport to downtown Vancouver; and a new convention centre on the Vancouver waterfront next to the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre. And this is before we start building state-of-the-art sports facilities.
BC taxpayers, of course, will pay for all of this, even the vast majority who will not be able to afford to attend the games, let alone book into a fancy Whistler hotel.
The Olympic bid committee expects all these commitments to be in place by this fall with work actually under way very early in 2003.”"”
My comment: In fact, just a fews day before the Vancouver civic election December 2002, the NPA dominated council under Mayor Philip Owen slipped into the Mayor’s office in an in-camera meeting and signed a binder full of agreements tying any future council to obligations.
Currently, the City of Vancouver has invested/financed over $1 billion directly for venues…this does not include any staff time, which has been substantial. This is a far cry from former Mayor and now Senator Larry Campbell’s declaration to the citizens of Vancouver when he said the Games wouldn’t cost the City a penny. I guess he was right in a way!
Montreal’s debt was chicken feed compared to the Campbell clan’s spending.
pwlg // Feb 19, 2010 at 1:30 pm
In Utah during the 2002 Winter Games, sales tax receipts increased by less than 1% over the previous year.
More people left Salt Lake City’s airport than came in during the month of February 2002 (during the Winter Games).
Jones Lang LaSalle, a global real estate investment company reported that convention delegates to Olympic host cities increases a year after the Games but after that the number of delegates returns to the same rate as if a city hadn’t hosted the Games (summer Olympic host cities).
The Federal Government Hosting Policy states in bold letters:
ECONOMIC IMPACTS ARE NOT BENEFITS.
Money from one sector of the economy or from another place in the country is diverted…expenditure switching…nothing more…
Philip Porter in a study on mega sports events and economic impacts…the impacts appear to be due to price increases.
Ron Strand // Feb 19, 2010 at 11:53 am
I think the most cynical move by the Liberals was when they announced a $10,000,000 cut in the Department of Families and Children. They made the press release the day the Olympics opened. Pretty cheezy.
Adrian Wilson // Feb 19, 2010 at 3:48 am
Spontaneous Combustion Hay Fire? Worse than the chainlink fencing to seal off the Olympic cauldron from the tourists is the large snow covered haystacks on Cypress Mt . These were to be elevated viewing areas for paying spectators of the games.
Any rancher could have told you that once those bales got soaked with rain and melt water, they would begin to mould inside from microbial action and begin to heat. Now they’re probably so hot that no amount of helicoptering of snow to cover them can make them safe for fans. No wonder they are all bare now and 28,000 standing room tickets had to be cancelled due to unstable standing area.
Let’s just hope they don’t catch fire!
Carolyn Thomas // Feb 18, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Very interesting article, Seth, with lots of questions that unfortunately should have been asked long before we set off on this obscenely expensive road to the Games, a very large 17-day drunken party of great benefit to corporate sponsors – without whom no modern Olympic event could happen.
It’s not really even about athletic achievement anymore despite all the hoo hah. That’s what World Championships are for.
Economist Dr. Jeffrey Owen of Indiana State University has written about the myth promised by all those economic impact studies: the myth that says hosting the Olympics will be good for the host city because of all those new jobs, increased tourism and worldwide exposure. Not true, says Dr. Owen.
In fact, he joins other senior economists who waste no time in bursting that particular bubble when he writes:
“To date, there has not been a single study of an Olympics or other large-scale sporting event that has found empirical evidence of significant economic impacts.”
Dr. Owen’s research includes a very interesting look at every Olympic host city’s post-Games experience since 1896. Fascinating – yet depressing when you compare what the host cities’ organizing committees predicted with what actually happened post-Games.
More on Dr. Owen’s work at: http://ethicalnag.org/2010/02/14/olympics/
Mike Stewart // Feb 18, 2010 at 4:28 pm
I live on Vancr. Island, where the ferry fares have gone up 40% since the advent of the phony-private ferry company – and another hike was announced just yesterday.
I can see no benefit from the Olympics for islanders, or anyone else outside of the Lower Mainland. All the (our) tax money was spent in the Richmond-to-Whistler corridor.
Your comment about help for homeless people in Vancouver struck a raw nerve. I am involved with a non-profit society whose goal is to end homelessness in our community. We are making some small progress, are getting huge support from local citizens, churches, and philanthropic groups, and more local businesses than I would have predicted.
We receive nothing whatever from the BC government, however. So the coming cuts won’t affect us – they can’t give us less than nothing.
The cuts will, of course, make the plight of the poor and homeless even more stark, and make the overall problems even more intractable. Is that a “benefit?”
Henry Hightower // Feb 18, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Anybody remember Expo 86?
We were promised that it would boost tourism, forever and ever, as I remember it. And it was in the summer, and lasted many months.
All I recall of the result is that a Hong Kong billionaire made a killing by buying up the whole site.
Another megaproject legacy.
Christine // Feb 18, 2010 at 3:12 pm
I live in Victoria, (recently stated one of the most expensive places to live), and i certainly don’t see how the Olympics benefit anyone on the island. I can’t get over what a huge mishandlement (is that a word? ~_~) of time and money the Olympics are in a day and age with so many issues.
My own small thoughts on this, are that the only people who stand to really profit from the games are the corporate companies who already have amassed wealth.
I saw a great article in the TC ( http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/2010wintergames/rosy+craft+vendors/2575364/story.html) talking about local crafters who were led to believe that they would greatly benefit and paid around $1200.00 for a table. Well, with how expensive everything is, who can afford to support hand made goods?
And as for tourists, I’ve heard from a few friends in Vancouver that the security is almost tyrannical in its actions which is sure to leave a bad taste for some people.
David Huntley // Feb 18, 2010 at 2:19 pm
The house at which my daughter and her children live is in one of the areas off-limits to parking for these two weeks unless the car is registered in the block.
After two long phone calls to city hall, a registered complaint, and some e-mails I eventually persuaded the City of Vancouveer parking authority to provide me with a permit to park in front of the house.
Two days ago I was visiting at the house when a relative from up the coast turned up unexpectedly. I had to shoo him away quickly as he had parked on the street. I told him why he had to leave, and he left quickly as he had seen a police car round the corner when he arrived.
If this is the way we have to treat visitors, it will not encourage them to return.
David Huntley // Feb 18, 2010 at 1:56 pm
There’s a great article in this week’s Guardian Weekly (12.02.10, p.9) by Lucy Hyslop. It is accompanied by a picture of a homeless person lying on a sidewalk below a large sign that says ‘Welcome’.
Aleda // Feb 18, 2010 at 1:32 pm
If there are overall benefits it will only be to the Lower Mainland, not to the rest of BC. As a resident of a rural community and a Health Care worker I am pessimistic indeed about the financial effects of the Olympics. My personal solution is to vote with my dollar – find more ways of avoiding taxes: reusing items, bartering, buy used rather than new, buy only what is needed.
marylee Stephenson // Feb 18, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Because the sites for visitation are very limited, in terms of location and now– less snow, the gains for ski/snow/mountain tourism will be momentary at best.
As for other tourism, being encouraged by those littel glimpses of BC-wide attractionos shown over and over at the Sea Bus, it depends heavily on car traffic. You don’t fly your family to Kelowna to hike or ski or ride horses. You hop into the family van — BUT, you now have prohibitive gasoline costs, so you may well stay closesr to home. I know from my own research on parks users and having written sometime ago a guide to the National Parks, that care/rv-based family trips have been decreasinig for perhaps a decade. There is nothing in the Olympics “legacy” that can overcome the constraints of gas prices — and fewer people want to be lumbered with some inefficient, bulky RV.
BC definitely does have to find other major “income streams” than tourism. It will always be a source of some income, but never what it was and the Olympics are a momentary upward blip and even then in those very limited sports and their fans.
Susan Stout // Feb 18, 2010 at 1:11 pm
with many restaurants increasing prices and adding 20% service charge (do you suppose the servers see the cash?), thousands of tickets cancelled due to ‘weather’ (read lack of planning), the sight of homeless and hungry everywhere and a young man dead (because of deliberate ‘speed increase’), if I were a tourist I’d never come back . . .
Lynn M. Morrison // Feb 17, 2010 at 1:51 pm
The cost of these games and the priority put on them makes me sick. In BC we have homeless, food banks in every town and city, long surgery waits, schools losing programs and we are indebting our children for another 30 years above and beyond what is already happening with global warming and prices for energy increasing by the month. I sincerely hope Vancouver and Whistler do realize some benefit from these games in the long term. Nowhere else will.
George // Feb 18, 2010 at 3:14 pm
Excellent comments – right on the mark
Brenton // Feb 16, 2010 at 11:15 am
Any boost during the games to restaurants and such seems to be largely dependent on geography. Not sure what this will mean in terms of longer-term; maybe just more tourists visiting Granville Island?
Brenton // Feb 16, 2010 at 11:13 am
Interesting piece in the Globe Business section this weekend examining the potential of the Olympics.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/what-legacy-vancouver/article1467045/?cmpid=tgc
romham // Feb 16, 2010 at 9:50 am
i dont believe it will. and apparently neither does the government of BC
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Province+million+from+community+services+children+families/2552733/story.html