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| Now that Vancouver has the 2010 Olympics where do we go from here ? |
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Original Article can be seen here
PM's daughter to be named to Olympic committee post
Richmond millionaire and former B.C. union leader also on the list
Peter O'Neil
Vancouver Sun
CREDIT: Vancouver Sun
OTTAWA -- Heritage Minister Sheila Copps is planning to appoint France Chretien-Desmarais, the daughter of Prime Minister Jean Chretien, to one of three federal posts on the 2010 Winter Olympics Organizing Committee.
Chretien-Desmarais lives in Westmount, is featured regularly in Montreal's society pages, and is connected to one of Quebec's most powerful families through her marriage to Power Corp. president Andre Desmarais.
The other two federal nominees on the 19-person board are Peter Dhillon, a Vancouver millionaire businessman and close ally of Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal, and Tony Tennessy, a former union leader in B.C. and friend of Austin Thorne, a former union organizer and Copps' husband.
Tennessy is past-president of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which represents 10,000 workers in B.C. involved in the construction and mining industries. He is also a director of Concert Properties Ltd., which contributed $2,000 to Copps' leadership campaign.
Jack Poole, the chairman of B.C.'s winning Olympic bid and now considered a candidate for the post of both chairman and chief executive of the Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, is Concert's founding chairman.
Chretien-Desmarais is involved in a number of charitable organizations and is listed as president of the board of the Montreal Art Institute Research Fund.
However, database searches have found little association with sporting or Olympic events before her previous appointment as one of 90 board members of the now-disbanded Vancouver 2010 bid committee's board of directors.
Chretien-Desmarais is not known to have attended bid committee board meetings though she did travel with her father to the final, successful push to win the bid in Prague in July.
The federal appointments are for three-year terms and none of the board members on the entire committee are remunerated other than for their expenses. However, there are a number of perks that go with the post, including a trip to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.
Environment Minister David Anderson, a former Olympic silver medal-winning rower, was interviewed earlier this week about the importance of having a strong board.
Anderson, who is no longer B.C.'s political minister and therefore unaware that Tennessy, Dhillon and Chretien-Desmarais were considered top candidates, said competent people with political connections shouldn't be excluded from consideration.
But he said all 19 members of the board must be active participants who work closely with the chief executive to ensure that an enormously complex event is successful.
"It's very important to have the best board we can because you just can't be a little bit out for the two weeks of the games," said Anderson (Victoria).
"You have to have everything working absolutely like a Swiss watch: click, click, click, click. It all has to fit in place. You can't be 90 per cent there."
Anderson said the games must take precedence over all other considerations, such as the games' role as an economic development tool. "We've got to look at this from the point of view of the athletes. Fine, it's obviously important. It's going to have an economic impact on the province. But the most important thing is to make sure the athletes think this is the best games it can possibly be."
The board is made up of seven members of the Canadian Olympic Committee, three members each from the federal and provincial governments, two each from the municipalities of Vancouver and Whistler, one from the Canadian Paralympic Committee, and one from the Lil'Wat and Squamish first nations.
Once the board is established members have the ability to appoint a 20th member, decide who among them will be board chairman, and then begin the search for a chief executive.
There are no rules prohibiting the chairman from seeking the chief executive post, even though U.S. and Canadian firms are under growing pressure after the Enron scandal to split those positions.
poneilcns@canwest.com
© Copyright 2003 Vancouver Sun
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This website was last updated 9/25/03
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