World Police Fire Games a lost opportunity for reconciliation

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/08/2023 (761 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The World Police and Fire Games wrapped up over the weekend, after 10 full days of events. Around 8,500 athletes from 55 countries competed in more than 60 sports across 40 venues in Winnipeg and Manitoba.

Was it a success? I think it depends on who you ask. But there was a missed opportunity to talk about the spectre that hung over the games the entire 10 days — four Indigenous women, victims of an alleged serial killer, the remains of at least two of which are still believed to be in a Winnipeg-area landfill.

For civic boosters, there’s been much talk of how this event was a much-needed economic shot in the arm for the tourism industry, particularly those located in the city’s downtown. There are estimates of an up to $85-million impact to the economy, but it’s not clear how that figure has been determined or who will see those dollars. But interviews from local restaurants and hotels suggest the games provided an uptick in sales, with athletes and their families enjoying what this city has to offer.

For those who have a much more pessimistic outlook, the money spent by various levels of government to support the games could have been spent on more meaningful projects. The event received $2 million in federal funding, $4.9 million from the province of Manitoba, and $1.5 million from the City of Winnipeg.

For many, it didn’t help that the games’ Athlete’s Village was adjacent to Camp Marcedes — named in honour Marcedes Myran, one of the women whose remains are believed to be at the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg. For the protesters calling for the landfill to be searched, this was viewed as particularly unsettling.

And there’s that missing opportunity.

The village was not open to the public. There were walls up around the venue with security. It was almost reminiscent of what other cities have done during their Olympics, creating a border between the elite and the marginalized. Think Rio 2016, when that city built huge walls leading into its Olympic stadium to hide and remove poor people from the view of foreign onlookers.

Except it didn’t work in Winnipeg’s case. About 100 demonstrators stood outside the barricades at the beginning of the games raising awareness to the cause for the search of the landfill.

Camp Marcedes is also next to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and in close proximity to the Athlete’s Village at the Forks as well. Instead of creating a wall between the protesters and the athletes, perhaps organizers should have worked harder at integrating the two groups. Perhaps, there was an opportunity for an education — after all, isn’t that what our reconciliation journey is supposed to be about?

Perhaps the CMHR should have spent some time working on its exhibits to question the ongoing concerns about policing and rights. Instead of keeping the protesters of Camp Marcedes out of the games’ venue, the organizers could have ensured they were an ongoing part of the ceremony. More could have been done to explain why throughout Canada’s history there’s been an uneasy relationship between Indigenous People and police.

To their credit, this is the first time the World Games organizers formed a committee to incorporate Indigenous elements and learning. But they stopped short of providing a formal statement about the ongoing issues of the landfill search, saying the games are non-political. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Police and fire departments, because of their power given to them by the state, are inherently political. Sports are also inherently political because of their power to drive public policy and divide loyalties. Denying this is remarkably naïve.

Organizers could have gone beyond artwork and elders at ceremonies and provided true educational resources about Indigenous experiences with police and in corrections. This includes the fact that according to statistics from the Justice Department: “Indigenous people continue to be jailed younger, denied bail more frequently, granted parole less often and hence released later in their sentence, are over-represented in segregation, over-represented in remand custody and more likely to be classified as higher risk.”

For the record, I don’t think holding the games was a bad idea. It brought some new tourists and their dollars to the province and provided an opportunity to sell our city. But it could have been much more. Women whose bodies remain buried in a landfill were part and parcel of these games, whether organizers wanted to recognize them or not.

Shannon Sampert is a communications consultant, freelance editor for Policy Options and former politics and perspectives editor at the Free Press. She teaches part time at the University of Manitoba. shannon@mediadiva.ca