Another major Ottawa blunder on the Olympics
Prime Minister cheaps out on major conference, extra train service, and Canada pavilion
By Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun columnist
July 2, 2009
Hello, Stephen Harper, are you out there? Do you know your government may be blowing a big part of our Olympic opportunity to market this city, province and Canada to the world?
An international conference, the Forbes CEO Forum, which would have brought the world’s top CEOs and some of its wealthiest investors to the West Coast just days before the 2010 Winter Games opening, has been scuttled by your bureaucrats to save $1 million US.
On another matter,
Mr. Prime Minister, your officials at the Canada Border Services Agency won’t permanently waive a $1,500 daily border fee to Amtrak, which wants to run a second train — on its own dime — from Portland to Seattle to Vancouver. If we keep that up, it will probably cost Vancouver a vital addition to cross-border passenger-rail service, a train that most experts say would add tens of millions of dollars to the local economy.
More importantly, that train would plug us into one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s fast-train networks, linking major U.S. cities and regional economies. You’ve probably read Richard Florida’s stuff — which the Obama-ites in the White House love — suggesting links between cities will create mega-hubs of economic power that are the future of the continental economy. In the Pacific Northwest, we call it Cascadia. It would be nice to be part of that.
But here’s the latest, troubling news:
Your federal servants, searching for savings, still won’t commit to building a Canada pavilion at the Games. They are privately saying they’re considering the idea, which also means something else: After years of planning, they might not build a national pavilion at all.
That would be a major blunder.
The federal government’s grasp of how to leverage the Olympics to market our country leaves something to be desired.
Last summer, our prime minister refused to attend the Beijing Summer Olympics, a move that China’s leadership took as a slight and still hasn’t forgiven. Federal officials are still trying to repair the damage from that and to get relations — and, more importantly trade talks — back on track.
In Beijing, Ottawa took a half-hearted approach to creating a Canada pavilion.
It was called B.C.-Canada House, a curtsy to the province because Vancouver was holding the next Olympics.
British Columbia did what it could, with a limited budget.
But let’s face it. The pavilion suffered because of a lack of federal support and the prime minister’s decision to reject a state visit. Attendance was dismal. Buzz about Canada, and the next Olympics in Vancouver, was just about zero.
That was a failing in Beijing. A repetition on our home turf in 2010 would be a huge mistake.
After the sports, the Olympics offer a chance to market and build international trade.
Smart countries have made that business legacy their focus in every Games for decades. So have corporations. And the Vancouver 2010 Olympics will be no exception.
More than a dozen nations are expected to have national pavilions in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics. Russia and Holland have already picked spots.
The United States, Germany, United Kingdom and others are expected to do the same, joining some of our own provinces, all hoping to sell themselves to a massive TV audience, investors and senior government officials.
Shouldn’t the federal government be doing the same? We’ve all paid for the Olympics already, in the billions of dollars. Why rob ourselves of the stage just as the party is about to begin?
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Hello, Stephen Harper, are you out there? Do you know your government may be blowing a big part of our Olympic opportunity to market this city, province and Canada to the world?
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Ottawa scuttles a golden opportunity to market Canada
By Miro Cernetig, Vancouver Sun
July 2, 2009
Forget, for a moment, the sports, the gold medals, the billions of TV eyeballs on Vancouver in 2010.
The real business plan underpinning the 2010 Winter Olympics is something else: Bring in the world's business elite, let them party at the biggest winter sports show on the planet, and between the events and banquets try to convince those CEOs and billionaires to invest some of their money here.
It's a tried-and-true strategy to parlay our multibillion-dollar Olympic investment into more than just a two-week event. It was why Expo 86, which made business its main focus, was a success and transformed Vancouver for years afterward.
Provincial officials -- who have about $1 million in VIP tickets to dispense -- are now following that model, quietly trying to attract those key investors, to ensure the legacy of the Olympics is more than just medals and memories.
But the federal government has undermined that vital strategy.
For reasons it has not officially explained, Ottawa quietly scuttled an international conference of global business leaders that was to be held just days before the kickoff to the 2010 Olympics, setting back our chances of leveraging international interest and investment in Vancouver, British Columbia and Canada. The department of foreign affairs and international trade pulled its $1 million US sponsorship of the Forbes CEO Forum, scheduled for February 2010 in Victoria.
It's a move that has mystified provincial officials, who were shocked by the federal government's sudden pullout and were offered no chance for the province to step in.
The Forbes CEO Forums attract hundreds of the world's top business leaders, who would have flown into the provincial capital before the Games. The expectation among provincial officials was that many of those CEOs would have stayed longer for the Olympics, increasing the number of business meetings and the face-time, possibly generating business deals.
There has been no official explanation or announcement from Ottawa on the logic behind the sudden reversal.
But many federal officials were as surprised as their provincial counterparts by the cancellation.
The suspicion was that the prime minister's office did not want to be seen sponsoring an elite event in tough economic times, federal and provincial officials said.
But it's generally viewed as a mistake by all. Throwing money into conferences might not be good optics as deficits soar. But the Forbes CEO Forum -- held just as the Olympics were beginning -- presented an economical way to market Vancouver, B.C. and Canada to the world's business elite.
Don't take my word for it. Listen to the feds themselves.
"The Forbes CEO Forum is the institution's flagship event, attracting some of the most elite decision makers and influencers from around the world," the government wrote in its tender for the conference.
"This forum typically attracts between 150 to 200 CEOs from Forbes' exclusive pre-qualified executives that represent some of the largest global growth companies in the world with over $100M in annual sales and a high propensity to invest."
A few months ago federal officials were even touting the forum as a bargain and, in conjunction with the Olympics, a unique opportunity to build Canada's brand.
"Canada needs to be present in the minds of investors and as a host partner for the Forbes CEO Conference, the location and timing of this event provides [the department of foreign affairs and international trade] with a unique and cost-effective opportunity to showcase, for an international group of business leaders, the Canadian brand as a competitive location and partner of choice for business and investment."
It's probably too late for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to reverse this short-sighted decision. The world's movers and shakers fill up their schedules quickly and a conference like this takes up to a year to plan.
He -- or at least somebody in the federal bureaucracy -- let us all down on this one.
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