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The internal battles to get an appointment to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic organizing committee are almost as fierce as the fight to put out the wildfires raging across the province.
The reason for the trench warfare is that these are plum political appointments that offer high public visibility plus some pretty great perks, and they have be made very soon because the board and chairman need to be in place before the International Olympic Committee, including President Jacques Rogge, arrives for two days of meetings in mid-November.
Being a director of the organizing committee of the Olympic games (OCOG in Olympic-speak) is a job with huge appeal to people who love the limelight and have their sights set on a big job in the future.
The biggest plum of all is being chairman, because when the Olympics come to town, the chairman of the OCOG will get more air time nationally and internationally than either the prime minister or the premier.
And to become chair, you need to be on the board and get 75-per-cent support from the others. The OCOG set-up, however, does have an out if the board is so fractious that directors can't agree on a chair. Since one director is to be appointed by the board, that person could be chosen to head the committee.
The chairman's position is so high-profile a position that many people have used it to substantially advance their careers. Best known are Peter Ueberroth and Mitt Romney.
Ueberroth chaired the organizing committee for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles for which he was named Time magazine's 1984 Man of the Year. He went on to be president of the U.S. Olympic Association and commissioner of baseball -- the job that George W. Bush once said was the post he most wanted -- and briefly he was running for governor of California until his campaign ran out of steam this week.
Mitt Romney leveraged the publicity he garnered as chairman of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City to become governor of Massachusetts.
The chairman's job aside, the perks of being on the OCOG board are better than almost any other patronage job that a politician can offer.
OCOG members won't be paid for attending meetings. But they get to travel. They get great seats for the 2010 Games and all three Olympics before that.
And they get lots of schmoozing opportunities with some of the most influential people in the world.
But the fiercest fighting for a spot on the board is among federal Liberals, who are either desperate to have one of the three Canadian government appointments or desperate to hand a plum to a loyal supporter.
It's party politics at its most internecine and nasty. And it's largely because of two lame ducks -- the slow-to-say-goodbye Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his loyal follower, Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, who is running for the leadership against Paul Martin.
Copps is rumoured to be eyeing the job as chairman for herself, but she might be happy even with a board appointment since her political career is likely to wane after Chretien goes.
David McLean may also be wanting a spot, having been one of Copps' appointees to the bid corporation's board. McLean is a longtime federal Liberal whose previous appointment was to the Canadian National Railways' board, where he served as chairman.
But neither Copps nor McLean may be Martin's choice for a reward. So there is speculation that whoever is appointed within the next few weeks may enjoy a short tenure and be replaced early in the new year after Martin officially takes over.
At the provincial level, there is a quieter but no less determined fight for its three appointments. Expect that Jack Poole, chairman of the bid committee and close friend of Premier Gordon Campbell's, will get one of those if he wants it, as it seems he does. The only question is whether Poole will lobby to be chairman.
After Larry Bell announced in May that he would be stepping down as chairman and chief executive officer of B.C. Hydro, there have been rumours that he might be chairman. But Bell said this week he's not interested in the job and nor has he been asked.
Another much, much quieter battle will be played out between the band councils of the Lil'wat and the Squamish. The two First Nations get just one seat on the board and finding a single person to represent the interests of both of them could be more complicated than any of the other appointments. The two neighbouring bands have a long history of keeping out of each other's business. Working together on the Olympic bid was the first time in living memory that they had cooperated on something. What makes it so complicated is that the Lil'wat's Mount Currie band recently elected a new chief and council who are not nearly so supportive of the Olympics as their predecessors. One solution that they may arrive at is to rotate the job annually between the bands.
The only key players with their acts together are the city of Vancouver and the municipality of Whistler. Vancouver announced its two appointments to the 20-person board this week, while Whistler made its appointments several weeks ago.
Vancouver dipped into the talent pool from the bid committee, appointing city manager Judy Rogers and Marion Lay. Rogers was on the bid's board and her name did come up earlier in speculation about who might be qualified for the OCOG chief executive's job.
Lay, a former Olympic swimmer, was a frontrunner for chairwoman of the bid committee and is now president of LegaciesNow, the society set up by the bid to provide funds for amateur athletes to help prepare them for international competitions.
The Whistler appointees are municipal administrator Jim Godfrey and Tourism Whistler president Barrett Fisher.
Rounding out the board are the automatics -- Patrick Jarvis, president of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, seven members of the Canadian Olympic Committee, including president Michael Chambers, COC secretary-general Chris Rudge, Canada's three International Olympic Committee members Charmaine Crooks, Dick Pound and Paul Henderson, one active athlete who was at either the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City or the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney and one other of the COC's choice.
There's a final wild card appointment to be made by the board.
And if all of this seems a bit arcane and not very interesting, the 20 people who are expected to be appointed within the next few weeks will determine how billions of dollars of taxpayers' money is spent.
Daphne Bramham can be reached at dbramham@png.canwest.com
© Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun
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