Posted by admin on Dec 5th, 2009
Mail Online, By Sam Greenhill and Daniel Bates, 5th December 2009
Scores of arrests have been made in a crackdown on illegal immigrants working at the Olympics site in East London. In the past seven months 93 unlawful workers from at least ten nations have been caught, figures showed yesterday. Some of those caught were asylum seekers – who are banned from employment here – while others were migrants who has arrived as ‘tourists’. The wave-shaped Aquatics Centre, which forms part of the Olympic site. Illegal workers were arrested in a crackdown by police, although it is not known on which section of the site they were working.
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Posted by admin on Nov 20th, 2009
By Bruce Constantineau, Vancouver Sun, November 20, 2009
VANCOUVER — B.C. residents are more skeptical than average Canadians about the potential benefits of the 2010 Olympics, but a majority still believe the Games will have a positive impact on the province, according to an Angus Reid survey. The online poll found that 57 per cent of British Columbians expect the Olympics will benefit B.C., compared with 76 per cent of all Canadians who feel the province will gain from hosting the Games.
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Posted by admin on Nov 6th, 2009
November 6, 2009, The Canadian Press
The union representing B.C. paramedics says Olympic organizers put pressure on the provincial government to legislate an end to the emergency responders’ strike. Hundreds of union members held a rally against the legislation Friday in front of the suburban office building housing the Games’ operations. On Thursday, union members disrupted a Winter Olympics security exercise.
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Posted by admin on Nov 5th, 2009
Nov 5 2009, rabble.ca, Pina Belperio
Nov. 4 marked the 100-day countdown to the 2010 Winter Olympics. A host of events were organized in Whistler to mark the historic occasion. The day began with the Spirit Program Breakfast with Doug Lipp, the former head of corporate training at Walt Disney (how appropriate), a citizenship ceremony for new Canadians, and the 100-Days to Go Celebration, complete with countdown cake and the Olympic mascots. Whistler’s mayor has cut 20 countdown cakes since the bid was announced in 2003. Despite the high number of students absent from Whistler schools due to the flu, the Whistler Conference Centre was packed with revelers. The perfect incubator for spreading the Olympic Spirit and the H1N1 virus. With less than 99 days to go before the Five Ring Circus begins, here’s a list I compiled of 99 positive and negative things that residents of Vancouver and Whistler can look forward to (in no particular order).
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Posted by admin on Nov 3rd, 2009
By Andrew MacLeod, 3 November 2009, TheTyee.ca
Earlier this year, the provincial government quietly downgraded the expectation for economic activity to be generated by the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver and Whistler by $6.7 billion. The government was using the number $10.7 billion as the estimated economic activity hosting the Olympics would produce. Now it prefers to say it will be $4 billion. But even that amount is based on a best case scenario mapped seven years ago by a consulting company, and real tourism revenues in recent years fall well short of that projection.
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