In one year’s time the Winter Olympics will have started in Vancouver/Whistler in British Columbia and Canada’s campaign to ‘own the podium’ will have begun.
There was a large party at the new Richmond skating oval paid for by the taxpayer, but unfortunately it was invitation only. Some people in Vancouver believe that the Winter Olympics will be the biggest sporting event in the world in 2010.
Besides the gang-related violence, the shootings, the bad drivers, and the city’s inability to cope with even a moderate snowfall, what intrigues me most is what the provincial government will do with all the homeless people that are found in Vancouver.
Not a day goes by without me being asked for money by a homeless person outside a supermarket, Skytrain station, or bus station. People regularly get on the bus with bags of bottles for recycling so that they obtain a few dollars to enable them to live another day.
I think the provincial government will offer these people a place in a hotel or hostel for the two weeks of the Olympics, so that they don’t get in the way of the visitors. This will be a temporary solution of course to an ongoing problem. Because of the lack of a proper social security system, the homeless find it very difficult to get jobs and places to stay and the ones they do get are run by charities. The government doesn’t want to have the province’s image tarnished by visitors being pestered for money by people who need the cash to survive.
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