November 24, 2004
Check Against Delivery

Thank you for coming today. This is something that we want to make sure touches the entire province, and all of you have been phenomenal over the last couple years, not just in building our successful bid, but also in keeping the Olympic spirit alive. I want to say "thanks" to every single one of you and ask that you thank the person sitting next to you for what they're doing in your communities.

One of the most exciting things for myself and for John Les, the Minister of Small Business and Economic Development, is the opportunity to think not only about the years leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, but also the years following.

We're already seeing the advantages of having the Olympics awarded to us: we're seeing a new sense of optimism in province. But we're also seeing a new attention being focused on British Columbia and all parts of British Columbia. What we can do to take full advantage of this in each and every community of this province? It's no small task to ask you to decide on what you can do to reflect the best of your community to the world that will come and visit us in 2010.

What we want to do today is to start to give you the building blocks that will allow us to be concerted, allow us to be focused, and that will allow us to maximize the benefits of the opportunities that lie before us in the province of British Columbia.

So today you're going to hear from a number of people, but we're also going to give you a chance, hopefully, to ask questions and get a stronger understanding of where we're going over the next ten years.

First, Marion Lay will speak to you. Marion is the president and CEO of 2010 LegaciesNow. It's a foundation project for us. It's saying: "Let's anticipate what we can do; let's give people the kind of support they need, give communities the support they need and give volunteers the support they need as we move towards 2010.”

The LegaciesNow program is not just about sports. It's about sports and recreation. It's about promoting culture. It's also about promoting the arts and volunteerism.

There won't be one major event hosted in our province over the next ten years that does not depend on individual citizens committing their time and their effort to make ensure that British Columbia is the best host it can possibly be.

I have a little phrase that I like to remember. It's called: the excitement of exceeding expectation. We want to exceed expectations for everyone that comes to Canada for these Olympic Games. We want to provide them with the most support we can so that the Games can be the best they can be.

We want to exceed expectations of the major sponsors that come to Canada for the Olympics. So you're going to hear today from some of the Olympic teams, the VANOC team, about how they have to put in place the foundations to allow this.

We want to exceed expectations in your communities too, in every community in the province if we can. That's why it's so important that you all are here to help us move ahead.

Marion Lay will talk to you about the Arts Now program, the Literacy Now program, the Sports and Recreation Now program, Volunteers Now, and, of course, the Spirit of B.C. program.

I can't stress this enough: the sooner we take advantage of the Olympic opportunity with what is probably the globe's leading brand, the better we're going to be; the better off we will be.

So I can tell that we have launched the new online 2010 Commerce Centre. The Commerce Centre can connect you and people in your community and enterprises in your community to what's taking place in Turin for the 2006 Winter Games, to what's taking place in Beijing for the 2008 Games, and what's taking place in Canada and British Columbia and Vancouver for the 2010 Games. What we will do through that website is try and make sure that people see how they can work together, see what business alliances might work for them. We'll try and provide some training so that everyone knows how to take part in the procurement process. John Les and his team are working very hard to make sure that we open those doors of opportunity.

I want to underline this as well: when we open the doors of opportunity, we can't make anyone walk through it. So it will be up to you, your community enterprises and your community initiatives to make sure that you can reach out and take full advantage of this opportunity. We will try and make sure the door is open as wide as possible.

We also want to be sure that the province's role in the Olympics and Paralympic Winter Games Secretariat is clear to all of you. Yes, we have one of those established. Brian Krieger works for the Secretariat, and he'll be introducing you to the 2010 Commerce Centre in more detail.

Dave Cobb is here today. Dave Cobb is the senior vice-president of revenue, marketing, and communications for VANOC. VANOC is the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Winter Games. Dave brings not just expertise but enthusiasm to this. Later, you'll be able to hear from him and ask him questions.

Gordon Goodman, who's also here, is the director of our Games Secretariat. He has been traveling around the province this fall, and he will continue to do that. He wants to provide each of your committees with the information you need about protecting the Olympic brands - because we have to protect that for the Olympics - and about expanding our own opportunities here, using the Olympics as a springboard for moving forward.

Has anyone heard about the discussions taking place in the media about what can be done and what can't be done with the Olympic rings? Well, Dave's going to tell you more about that, but I want to tell you that it was important for us that we establish our own brand for this committee, one that wasn't in conflict with the Olympics.

We have got a suggestion that we are going to move forward with. You are now all chairs of the Spirit of B.C. Community Committees. The Spirit of B.C. is going to be what we build on, what we build with, and what we share with the world.

One of the things that really defines our province is its spirit—the Spirit of British Columbia. Once, it was the spirit of exploration. Now, it is a spirit of welcoming. It is the spirit of striving again to be the best we can be and taking on big challenges and setting large goals for ourselves, and then surprising ourselves by actually achieving those goals.

The spirit of B.C. is not just about this year and next year. It's about the whole next decade. It's about reinforcing the strengths of your communities, of reinforcing the strength of citizens' commitments to making their communities the best place on earth to live in, and recognizing that moment when the world looks at us and agrees: British Columbia is the best place on earth. We want the world to know this; we want to show them.

One of the most important things we can do as we build this legacy, is to be sure that British Columbia's spirit of excellence reaches across to the entire province.

That was a commitment we made prior to the 2010 bid being successful.

We talked about establishing Olympic live sites. The Olympic live sites will be funded, both, by the federal and provincial governments. We've decided to move on the provincial initiative now. The federal government's will, hopefully, complement ours.

We will be committing, as we said to you before, $20 million for Olympic live site projects in your communities. Our goal is to help your communities share the excitement of the Olympics.

Our Olympic live site goal is to make sure that the Olympics reach every part of this province. Funding will be available for construction or for an upgrade of facilities. For example, a theatre upgrade may, in fact, allow you to plug in major events directly to your community.

I know that many of you hosted parties in your communities to watch and to celebrate the decision in Prague. How many of you did that? How many of you were actually at a celebration? That's an example of the type of public event that we want to reinforce and build on.

Whether it's in Prince George or in Nanaimo, in Cranbrook or Kamloops, we want to try and connect people to the excitement of the Games. We'll connect them through volunteering; we'll connect them through activities; we'll connect them through arts programs.

Perhaps you'll want to support something special in your community? Whatever your decision, there will be resources available; the LegaciesNow program is available. It will fund up to 50 per cent of the cost of an eligible project—up to $330,000.

Now, you can come to us with a project that's a $600,000 project. It's not hard to figure out what 50 per cent of that is; it's $300,000. You may also decide that you want to have more than that. You may want to have your local government contribute; you may want to bring in some of the private sector to contribute: that will be up to you.

It could be an athletic project. It could be improving a cross-country ski run. It could be making sure that your ski hill is doing it the way it should be. It might be expanding an arena. It might be adding to your auditorium so there can be a larger number of people who can attend there and watch events there.

Application forms will be handed out to everyone here today and know that today, every municipality and every regional district in the province will have application forms mailed to them as well.

Work with your councils and with your communities to try and come up with what you think will be the best possible project - both, what you can afford and what will have a lasting benefit to the community. That's your criteria.

So I hope that you will all be not just excited by this opportunity, but stimulated by this opportunity - again, think about the long term; to think about working towards 2010, yes; celebrating 2010, for sure; but going beyond 2010 in making sure that that is a legacy for you and your community - that will help you build the kind of future for your community that you want. We're going to count on you for that.

John Les will review those applications as they come in. We will be making decisions as we go along. So if your application comes in early, you'll get a decision early. If your application comes in late, you'll get a decision late. We're expecting to have the decisions finalized by December of 2005.

If you've thought of this in a way that will reflect a positive initiative in your community, you probably would like it to happen sooner, rather than later. That's why we've set this timeframe in place.

We will be encouraging the federal government to work with our communities, and we'll make sure that the federal government knows about the Spirit of B.C. Community Committees and what you're doing so that they can see how they can complement your activities.

Funding will be available to local government outside the GVRD and the Squamish-Whistler corridor. Now, I know there's some people that will be concerned about that, but there are enormous advantages to the GVRD Squamish-Whistler corridor, which are not readily available to Terrace or to Kitimat or to Clinton. So we want to try and make sure that we are distributing the benefits of the Olympics as well as we can: that's one of the reasons that we've done this.

We've heard a lot of suggestions recently concerning major regional training facilities. I want to underline that: major regional training facilities. Every community can't have a major regional training facility. We've got some very good ideas from communities all over the province. Again, we want to try and build on that, but we'll have more to say about that in the future when we've got a better idea of what is possible and what is not.

Applications for the Olympic live site program will be available through your local MLAs. They'll be available at government agent's offices and also through the Ministry of Small Business and Economic Development. The Ministry of Small Business and Economic Development will administer the program.

Many of you have been anxiously anticipating this program's establishment. Some have already sent applications in. If you act quickly, we will act quickly on your behalf.

I've visited many of your communities around the province. There is not a community in British Columbia that doesn't have something special to offer. And when I visit with you in your communities, you know exactly what it is; you know exactly where to take me.

Or if the Queen came to your community, you know exactly what you'd like to show her. Or if a dignitary from someplace wanted to come, you'd know what you want them to see. Your chamber of commerce and your tourism bureaus - they all know what to show off.

It's important for you to try and use that knowledge to generate opportunities for the 2010 Olympic live site program.

We won the Olympics in July of 2003, and whether we noticed it or not, the world started looking at British Columbia.

People that live outside of British Columbia started wondering about British Columbia. You know, we think that everybody knows about our province; we think everyone knows about where we live. I think we should all remember: there's only 4.2 million British Columbians. There are people in Saskatchewan and Manitoba who don't know about all that we have to offer.

So last summer we did a program to try and encourage tourism in British Columbia. We advertised across the province: this is the best place on earth to live, to play and to visit. We watched as occupancies in hotels and motels and campgrounds went up. They went up because British Columbians were discovering British Columbia.

So we thought to ourselves: how do we tell the rest of the province, the rest of the country, the rest of continent, and all of the world what we have to offer?

I can tell you this. The first time I went to Clinton, I had not heard of the Gorge. Having been there, I can tell you that every British Columbian should see it.

When we started to do that program this summer, do you know what we found out? The last time that British Columbia went out and built what we call an image bank - the pictures of our province that you want to share with others, the pictures that we want travel agents to know about and that we want tour operators to know about and that we want families in Ontario to know about…. The last time we did that: guess what year it was? Well, it was prepared in '84 and '85. Has anything changed since '84 and '85 that you've noticed? There's been huge changes.

I think that one of the things that's happened in the province over the last little while is people are getting a little bit more optimistic, a little bit more excited about their future. It is a challenge often to think and to imagine how you want your part of the province to be reflected. What is it that's really different about your place? It's not the fact that you've got streets or cars or roads. It's something else that makes it different. Normally it's the people. Normally it's the cultural activities.

I can remember the first time I went to the town of Port McNeill on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Port McNeill is not a huge town. I had a three and a half hour tour of Port McNeill with the mayor, and all of the things that they've done as people, as citizens for one another, helping one another, building that town, creating both a culture and a social infrastructure that they were all proud of.

I hear that in each part of the province. I remember going to Fort St. James and they bragged about the nine-hole golf course they'd built and the next nine holes that they were going to build. They were doing it with volunteer labour and citizens working with one another in one of the most spectacular places in the world.

So I need, we need, all of us need for you to imagine what you would like the world to see, for you to imagine what you would like your communities to be. It's not what they were; it's what they will be. It's where you want to go; it's what you want them to become.

Again, I would encourage you to talk to your local representatives, talk about what you can do. We're trying to build the cultural background of British Columbia as well as the sporting background of British Columbia. So I encourage you to try and take advantage of that.

For 2004-05, we've doubled the tourism promotion budget in British Columbia. We have literally hundreds of millions of dollars coming to British Columbia as the result of people's enthusiasm for building our resort infrastructure. Sandy Santori is here with us today, the Minister of State for Resort Development in the province.

It's about $1.5 billion of investment we're seeing, and we're seeing it in Fernie, we're seeing it in Kimberley, we're seeing it in Invermere, we're seeing it in Kicking Horse, we're seeing it in Valemount, we're seeing it in Mount Washington, we're seeing it at Big White, we're seeing it a Silver Star. We're seeing it all over the province. We want to make sure that people know about that. We want to make sure they know about British Columbia so we doubled the Tourism B.C. budget so they can promote British Columbia to the markets around the world.

On top of that there is a $25 million budget that we've provided to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities so they can start showing off your local communities - again, building on, hopefully, the success of Picture B.C. and the work that's done in Picture B.C.

We just announced new circle tours. How many of you have heard of the circle tours? We've got seven circle tours that are happening in British Columbia at this point. We've got two more that we're working on.

One is the hot springs circle tour in the East and West Kootenays, the mountain and vineyard circle tour in the Rocky Mountains and the Okanagan, the ranchlands and rivers from Hope into the heart of the Cariboo Country, the heritage discovery tours from Vancouver to Prince George to the coast and down Vancouver Island, the coast Cariboo circle tour up the Island to Port Hardy and to Bella Coola, Williams Lake and to Vancouver, the lakes and trails circle tour in Kamloops to Valemount and Prince George and south on Highway 97, and the great northern circle tour which is Prince George to the Peace to the Yukon border and through the great northwest of our province. We're also developing circle tours on Vancouver Island.

Again, the idea is to connect; the idea is to bring people to the big idea and allow you to show off the things that you have within that framework.

We're sitting today in the Pan Pacific. Right next door there is a $565-million convention centre expansion happening. Canada, British Columbia, the private sector are all part of that convention centre.

60 percent of the visitors that come to Vancouver today go to the other parts of the province. What we want to do is increase that. We want to drive that 60 to 70, to 75, to 80 percent. We want to do that by showing them the product. If they don't know what's here, they're not going to go.

The circle tours are a way of creating a framework of opportunity for people in different parts of the province and allow you, as the Spirit of B.C. Community Committee, an opportunity to plug into the tourism experience.

One of the things that the Olympics has done for us is it's allowed us to generate what is effectively a whole new industry in British Columbia. It's what I will call, for want of a better term, sports tourism.

In three months, the Canadian cross-country championships will be in Prince George. The Canadian cross-country ski team is training at Silver Star in Vernon right now. 22 teams for the 2002 Olympics down in Salt Lake trained at Silver Star.

Many of those skiers will, I think, be Canadian athletes that we will watch with pride as they move towards the podium in 2010.

In 2005, we have the men's curling championships in Victoria. That'll bring up to 10 million additional dollars into the capital regional district's economy.

In 2005, we have the Grey Cup here in Vancouver. This year in Ottawa, the Lions didn't win. In 2005, the Grey Cup will be in Vancouver. And count on it; the Lions will win in 2005.

More importantly, Ottawa generated $40 million of activity through the Grey Cup. I was there with a planeload of fans, cheering on the Lions. What really struck me was that these kinds of events would bring people from other places to our place. They are huge promotional opportunities.

When you have the Canadian cross-country ski championships in Prince George, that is a major promotional opportunity, not just to show how Prince George can handle the event, and not just to show what great hosts they are, but to start telling people about what else is available in the north, telling people where else they can connect to, trying to listen to them about what they would be excited by, what would lure them back, what would bring them back to British Columbia.

So we're looking at that. I think we should all think about that. We have the men's curling championships that are coming in 2005 to Victoria, as I said. We have the 2006 Junior World Hockey Championships in British Columbia. That will generate, we estimate, about $30 million for the economies in Vancouver, Kelowna and Kamloops, all of which will host different parts of that tournament.

In 2008, we have the North American Indigenous Games coming to the Cowichan Valley. We estimate that, too, will generate about $30 million.

Think of what it will happen if we get better at this. If we're going to bring them here to the Cowichan Valley; they're going to participate; they're going to have a good time. Maybe we should take them from the Cowichan Valley all the way up to Port Hardy, to Prince Rupert, along Highway 16, along one of the most incredible drives you'll ever see, down Highway 97 or down Highway 95 through the Rocky Mountain trench. Think of what we can do with that and what you can do with this.

We'll also have the 2009 World Police and Fire Games in Burnaby. That will probably bring as many, if not more, athletes to British Columbia than the Olympics. What if we take that as a practice round for 2010? We bring those people here, we bring their families here and we say: do this; take this weekend; take an extra week. If we can think about those things in our Spirit of 2010 committees, for your communities it will make a huge difference, I think.

I want you to remember that this is about your communities. It's about your province, yes. But your province is made up of your communities. We want you to benefit. We want you to feel comfortable telling us what more we can do to help. We hope that you can take some of the tools that we're putting in your hands that we'll talk about today and start building the kind of program that you want and maximize the benefits of all of these events for your communities.

This is the last thing I'm going to say. I want you to think beyond 2010. I want you to think out ten years. Bill Gates once said things are going to change much less than we expect in the next two years and much more than we expect in the next ten years. When you think about it, that's always the case, isn't it?

You know, if you think about this year versus last year, there are some things that are a little better. There's some things that maybe aren't working the way we’d like. But, generally speaking, we can see a gradual change. Now, think about this year compared to 1994. Then think of what we can be like by 2014, 2015. We start today, and we can ramp up. The first steps you take will be probably some of the most difficult steps and maybe feel like some of the shortest steps. But if you set a goal for yourself, have a vision of where you want your community to go, we will get there. That is the spirit of British Columbia.