Sports for the people, not the corporations! No Olympics on stolen Native land!

Resolution adopted by the 36th Central Convention, Communist Party of Canada, held Feb. 5-7, 2010, in Toronto.

The opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics will take place on Feb. 12 in Vancouver, seven years after the people of Vancouver were promised an "Olympic legacy" of athletic facilities, social housing, and an economic boom. Outside the ceremonies, a "Take Back Our City" festival and parade will remind the world that these grandiose promises, and indeed the official aims of the Olympic movement, are in stark contradiction to the grim realities of this 17-day celebration of capitalist greed.

     Four "Host First Nations" are part of the official structure of the Winter Olympics, but many of the Games facilities are build on unceded indigenous territories, and Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia still face widespread unemployment, poverty and incarceration rates. Since 2003, real estate values and developer profits have skyrocketed, and the Olympic athletes' village will become million dollar condos, while the number of homeless in the streets continues to rise. Defying the Olympic words of peace, Canada remains fully engaged in the bloody war of occupation in Afghanistan, refusing to consider even a temporary truce during the Games.

     The Games will feature a star-studded "Cultural Olympiad", even as the B.C. provincial government drastically cuts support for arts and culture. At a time when the Vancouver region is desperately short of funds for education, low-income housing, recreation facilities, and new buses, governments are pouring $6 billion into preparations for the Winter Olympics. This includes $1 billion for so-called "security", turning the region into a virtual armed camp, complete with 40 kilometres of barbed-wire fencing, 16,000 police and troops, constant overflights by military jets, escalating police harassment of critics of the Games, and ominous warnings about the "dangers" of public protests. Librarians and other public sector workers have been forced into the role of monitors to protect the "rights" of corporate Olympic sponsors.

    In short, rather than a celebration of athletic excellence with long-term benefits for the people, the Winter Games in Vancouver are primarily a heavily militarized promotion of corporate domination, held on unceded Native lands. Delegates to the 36th Central Convention of the Communist Party of Canada extend our full solidarity to the Feb. 12 "Take Back Our City" rally, and to all those who continue to expose and resist this spectacle of profiteering. No Olympics on stolen Native land! Homes, not Games! Sports for the people, not the corporations!