The View from the West

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Paranoid political posturing over the Games

By: Halifax Chronicle-Herald

19/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

LIKE moths to a flame, protesters and politicians are irresistibly attracted to the Olympic torch.

In Victoria two weeks ago, hundreds of demonstrators blocked downtown streets and forced the torch relay to change course. What better way to highlight the diversion of billions of dollars towards the Winter Olympics -- billions that could instead be spent on housing or health care -- than to reroute the flame procession itself?

There is no shortage of other objections to the Olympics -- namely, their massive economic and environmental footprint, the runaway costs and their increasingly corporate character -- but the reality is the Games are going ahead in February, warts and all. The time to actively protest has passed. It does little good now to ruin other Canadians' enjoyment of the torch relay.

Elsewhere across this land, there are no demonstrators trying to cast a dark shadow over the event. If there's any jostling around the torch, it's between politicians who want to bask in its glow.

Last week, the NDP's Megan Leslie complained that no opposition MPs had been invited to the Olympic relay pit stop in Halifax scheduled for Wednesday. After all, she is the MP for the riding. She said Conservative MP Gerald Keddy was scheduled for an official appearance at the event featuring Sidney Crosby as a torch bearer, but Keddy has since denied that.

Furthermore, the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) denies any suggestion it's playing politics and says issuing invitations is the bailiwick of local event organizers.

In a sense, you can can't blame Leslie for being paranoid. The Conservative government has politicized stimulus spending throughout this country -- inviting Tory candidates and excluding MPs from funding announcements in opposition-held ridings. It's not an Olympic-sized leap to expect partisanship to rear its ugly head at events that are supposed to be about sportsmanship.

The Liberals' paranoia, on the other hand, is pathological. They went so far as to superimpose a federal riding map over the torch relay route and jumped to the conclusion that it shows blatant favouritism. The flame will be making pit stops in Conservative-held ridings 62 per cent of the time.

However, the methodology of torch tracking is rather suspect and the implication of bias on the part of VANOC is weak, since the process of mapping out the route began long ago under the Liberals. In any case, the opposition will only get burned if it keeps playing the whining game. Canadians want their athletes, not politicians, to shine.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 19, 2009 A14

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