Transcript of John Furlong's speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade - October 25, 2006

Thank you, Jack. Thank you very much, that was a lovely introduction. I think you should come back up here and deliver the rest of the speech! Good afternoon everybody. You’ve really honoured us by coming out here today and filling the room and showing extraordinary interest and commitment to what we’re trying to achieve. There’s a lot to cover so I’m going to get right at it and as Jack has done, I’d also like to recognize the team that’s working on this project. Many of them are in the room; most of them are back at the office working hard. They give everything they have to this project every day. I’m extremely proud of every one of them. Also, I’d like recognize our chair and directors as I believe we have a number of directors in the room. Along with Jack, we have Rusty Goepel, Charmaine Crooks, Jim Godfrey and others. I’m sorry if I’ve missed anyone. This is a “roll up your sleeve” board that works tirelessly to guide, influence, encourage and coach the organization to the success that we have to have. Our partners, many of them are in the room, we thank all of you. I especially want to thank Bell Canada who are so committed to a stronger Canada like we are for everything they’ve done and are doing to help the project be successful. I’d like to mention the two Olympic ministers, Minister Hansen and Minister Emerson, to tell you that-- to pass without mentioning them really would not be right. Both these men have walked every square foot of our venues. They believe profoundly in what we’re trying to do. And when we talk to them, we talk about ideas. We talk about the way forward… the things we need to do together. It’s a very productive and positive relationship which we’re grateful for. To every one of our sponsors and partners who have come to the project, we’re grateful for what you’re doing. And I thank the Board of Trade and every person in this room who has given anything at all, whether it’s a word of encouragement, a letter, anything that you have done to help this project be great. We are very, very, thankful to you.

So it’s been a little over three years since we won the Games and it’s a little over three to go. I think it’s fair to say that we are where we think we need to be now. Construction is on schedule; it is on budget. And we have a healthy construction contingency in place to protect the project. Revenues are up. We have strong sponsor support nationwide from all parts of Canada. Our expenditures are under control. Our planning is progressing well in every area. Our focus over the past year, as you would expect of us, has been on risk management, controls and quality decision making. Some of it has been tough. This time next year there will be a thousand days, give or take, to the arrival of the flame and the beginning of the real excitement.

I just want to switch for a second to a different theme. You know, most of the Games will be watched by people around the world on television. Some three billion people, we are told, will tune in to watch what happens here in British Columbia and Canada in 2010. They will watch the Games through ceremonies, cultural programs, events, sports and we will try to tell the world a story…a story that will evoke emotion, admiration, pride and excitement. It will be a story about our country, our province and our communities. It will be a story about us. The biggest broadcaster in the Olympic Family is NBC. Just before the Olympic Games opened in Torino, NBC opened their broadcast by telling a story about Torino to the world. I’d like you to look at this piece of video and imagine what it is that they might have to say about us in 2010.

[Video]

So that was just four minutes of thousands and thousands of hours of coverage that was broadcast around the world by television companies. Jean-Claude Killy, who was the Chairman of the Commission for Torino, told us in Vancouver a few months ago that when it comes right down to it, the Games will be judged by two things: 1) how you treat the athletes and 2) what people see on the TV. And it’s important for us to recognize this is how the world will dial in to what’s happening here and we need to be good and strong and tell a wonderfully positive story.

Last year I told you that as an organization we were facing a number of challenges. We told you what the road ahead looked like and what we needed to do with our construction program.. Today, I’m back here to tell you that we are on time and we are on budget. We are fully funded to build our venues. The $110 million that we asked the Government of Canada and the Government of British Columbia to provide us with to complete that program. has been given to us. Our partners have trusted us and supported us and in their name we will build those venues for under that budget the way we should. When the snow comes in just a few weeks, we will have passed the halfway mark with the construction program.. The goal of finishing early will be met so that the athletes can assemble out here when we promised that they could. Two weeks from today, we will announce the completion of our first venue. And no, I’m not going to tell you which one it is! You’ll have to wait. But we will be done with one venue so the athletes in that sport will be able to start training and preparing for 2010. I wish I could take you for a walk into the Callaghan Valley to show you the magnificence of the area and the work that’s been done to create this perfect scene for the staging of the Games. I’ve been in there recently, met the crew and watched the way the work is evolving. If you could just stand there and see the trails and see the magnificent geography, you would believe that this is going to be an extraordinary experience for every single person who walks into that valley to watch those events in 2010.

Up on the Sliding Centre on Whistler Blackcomb Mountain, we’re busy building the Sliding Centre there. This venue, of course, is one of the ones that we’ve spoken about the most. It’s a complicated venue. We’re at about the halfway point with that venue as well. One of the unique features of what’s going on there is this crew of men who have come here from Labrador to help build this venue. These are the best men in the world at this kind of construction. They’re out there. They’re completely excited about what they’re doing. They love working for the Games and they have that project in great shape and we’re extremely proud of them. Our partners are building the two villages: the Olympic Village at False Creek and the Olympic and Paralympic Village in Whistler. Out of those two villages, there will be extraordinary housing legacies including a social-housing legacy of 250 units here in Vancouver. In Whistler, 90 percent of the housing will be affordable and there will be a centre there for athletes who can come to Whistler and train and not have to worry about cost after the Games.

VANOC has two specific mandates. Our job is to complete those venues on time and under budget, that’s one. The second one is to stage the Games and to raise the money to stage the Games. And that is currently our major focus. The venues are funded by the Government of Canada and the Government of British Columbia and the Games’ operations are funded entirely by the private sector.

Clearly, in an organization like ours, you have to raise a lot of money. We will need revenues of about $1.7 billion to stage the Games. Our fundraising is going well. It’s ahead of our budget projections way back in 2002 which were at $450 million. We’ve passed $550 million already of the $700 or so million we hope to raise by Games time. The target of raising $100 million in 2006 will be met and new partners will be announced soon. We have support from large companies and small companies. Today in the room, I’m happy to introduce you to nine new partners that have joined this enterprise, nine new licensees. These are companies that will sell Olympic-branded merchandise of various kinds. The B.C. companies are Aritzia, Kootenay Knitting Company, Panabo, Please Mum and Wilson. And from across the country, Filmar, New Era, Paris Gloves and Trimark. If they’d like to stand up…These are our new partners and there will be many, many more small businesses who will be able to engage with the Vancouver Organizing Committee in the same way.

You know, I’d like to talk now a little bit about our planning. It’s been a tough but an extremely productive year. We’ve been very focused and I know you’ve all been watching that. The atmosphere inside the Organizing Committee is intense. We have had to and are looking at many things differently than we might have. We’re looking for creative ways to solve problems and we’ve had to make a lot of tough and major decisions because of the situation that we find ourselves in. You’ll all know that we negotiated with the International Ice Hockey Federation that we would play the Olympic tournaments on smaller ice, on NHL-sized ice. This reduced the complexity of our program, it saved us money and it just made our project better. I’ll leave it to you to judge how it affects the Canadian team at the Games. We’ve also made some changes to move some of the Paralympic events to Vancouver and this was, I think, something that caught some of you a bit by surprise. We did this for a number of reasons. We’ve reduced complexity. We’ve reduced the number of venues we needed to build. We’ve been able to also bring the City of Vancouver closer to the Paralympics and hope to expose children who go to school here and others to those events. We believe that the Paralympic sledge hockey tournament and curling events that will be staged in Vancouver will be sold out as will the events that are staged in Whistler.

You’ve heard us talk about the cruise ship idea. That idea is still alive. Our goal here was to bring world-class accommodation into the Sea-to-Sky corridor to deal with what we believe will be high demand. We’re not exactly sure yet who will stay on that ship. It may be the media; it may be only some of the media. There may be other groups who stay there.

Sustainability has been a major driver in the thinking inside of the Organizing Committee. We’ve been constantly trying to think about what others are watching. Are we being responsible? Are we doing the right thing? Are we trying to engage every sector of the community? And we’re doing our best. We’re doing everything we possibly can and if you came out to our offices today and went down onto the first level, you’d find a little enterprise that’s operated by an organization called “Cooks Studio” which is a small little business from the Vancouver Downtown East Side. They’ve hired under-employed people, brought them in off the street, trained them how to be cooks and have developed this enterprise. We’ve entered into a contract with them to come out and provide food services to the hundreds and eventually thousands of people who will work out of our head offices and we’re very proud of that. One of the statistics that we’re most proud of is the fact that we’ve been able to engage First Nations’ contractors in the construction of the venues. They’ve given us a decided edge. The quality of the work is terrific. The projects they’re working on is ahead of schedule. And the unemployment rate in the Mount Currie and Lil’wat Bands as a result of this work has fallen from 83 per cent to about 25 per cent. Obviously, this a fantastic achievement and we’re very happy about it.

You know, we’re accountable for Games delivery, for revenues, for transportation, logistics, for keeping all of those promises, and doing all of the things that you have to do at Games’ time to live up to that promise. It’s a lot of pressure. But Canadians will judge the Games by what happens to our athletes. They will turn on their television set and they’ll want to see podium finishes. They’ll want to hear the words of “Oh, Canada” again and again. And they’ll want to see Canadian athletes in first, second and third place. This is what the Own the Podium program was launched to help us achieve. Own the Podium is about bringing science to sport. It’s about changing from a culture of participating to a culture of winning. One of the sports, and I’ll just show you a little clip here, is of a skeleton athlete. One of the things we’ve been able to do for the athletes in the skeleton program is provide them with wind-tunnel testing which is a way for them to improve the aerodynamic nature of the sled, how they lie on this sled and how they come down the mountain. And the effort here is not to get an extra inch but it’s to get an extra one-hundredth of an inch, a little bit more. These athletes are among the best in the world already. We hope through OTP we can launch them to top spot in the world. So that’s the first one. The other project we’re very proud of is for our skiers. In the past, what’s happened to our skiers is that they’ve had to, in the summer time, go off to Argentina or Switzerland or Austria to train. And when you’re in Europe and in South America, it’s very hard to get to the front of the line. It’s extremely expensive and very difficult on them. So what we have tried to do is to work with the Calgary Olympic Development Association and with the Canadian Olympic Committee, and we’ve helped launch a program called “Camp Greene at Farnham Glacier.” This is Camp Greene in this picture here. And these are the tents that the athletes stay in. It’s quite good accommodation. They go up there for the summer and a number of disciplines are able to train there. And this is the way the skiing program will evolve over the next few years, how they will try to get their edge so that in a sport that we once dominated, that we can dominate again and get the results that we expect. The athletes are absolutely thrilled with this. It’s really made life a lot easier, a lot less expensive and they are the number-one priority at this location. So OTP is very, very important.

You know, ours will be a story about Canada delivered by British Columbians and by a team of people assembled from across the country and around the world. The following video I’m going to show you goes right to the heart of our vision. I think it says it all a lot better than I could ever say it. It speaks to the marvels of British Columbia, of Canada, of Vancouver, of Whistler and of Richmond. It speaks to the human power of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. It speaks to talent and to possibilities, to youth, to diversity and to the power of one person. As you watch, you might ask yourself what are you prepared to do, what can you contribute.

[Video]

Now for the way ahead. In the next few weeks, we will deliver our business plan proposal to our Board of Directors and the Board will review it. Shortly after that, the plan will be advanced to our partners and then on to the IOC. And in the early part of next year, that plan will be made public and you’ll all get to see exactly how the Games are being framed up and the things that we’re committed to. In the year ahead, we will start to engage the business community about many things. Among those things we will be asking you to look at program inside your business that would allow people to be released to become volunteers at Games time. We will be talking to you about the possibility of having you second staff to come and have an extraordinary work experience at the Games that would help us and ultimately help you. Our volunteer program will be almost set to go this time next year and our ticketing plan will also be finished.

We talk a lot about tickets. The other day I was walking through Pacific Centre Mall and a mother with her ten-year-old daughter stepped right in front of me and she looked at her daughter and she said, “Tell Mr. Furlong what you’ve been doing.” And this little girl looked up to me and she was telling me that she’s keeping this scrapbook on the Games which is now three years old and it’s this thick. And she cuts everything out of the paper and is compiling this wonderful story that she wants to keep for the rest of her life. But in addition to that, she is saving every penny. She’s cutting grass, doing dishes for money, beg, borrowing, stealing every penny she can find because in her heart, she wants to go to every sport one time. And this is how young people are lining up and looking at the Games. This is why we have to be so good and this is why we have to make it possible for everybody to get inside what we’re doing. This time next year we will be preparing for test events and the Torch Relays plan, which will be a plan that will encompass the entire country, and the entire province will be just about ready. Our team will have grown from 275 today to about 485. The mascot or mascots will have been introduced to you and the venue program will be largely completed. The athletes of this country will be moving to the West Coast to begin the preparation to try to achieve top-nation status in 2010. Everybody should have a Games experience, whether they’re in business, whatever it is that they’re doing in the province. I remember the Premier telling us at the very beginning… five, six years ago… it is critical that every single British Columbian experience the Games. So we, as an Organizing Committee, want to engage and have a dialogue about children, about schools, about universities, about businesses, communities, clubs, churches. It doesn’t matter who: everybody. We need to talk about ways that people could be engaged, attached and fully enjoy this experience as we head to 2010. So that’s the work that will come this year.

I should tell you something that I found to be profoundly powerful to look at. We took a tour through the north of the province just after last year’s presentation. We started in Prince Rupert and we drove down through all of the communities of the north visiting small villages, First Nations’ communities, large towns, talking to chambers of commerce, talking to community groups, talking to city councils. And I have to tell you that from the north, a thousand miles away by road to the door of this city, everybody has a 2010 plan; everybody has a 2010 strategy; everybody has a 2010 committee. And people all over the province are dreaming about ways to participate, about ways that their children might be able to be involved in ceremonies or cultural program. And this is exactly what an organizing committee like ours dreams to have; we want everybody to be involved. So it was extremely exciting for us to see that and, of course, it reminds us again of how good we have to be at the work we do. After the Torino Olympics, we went to Newfoundland and crossed the country and we talked in every province in Canada about the power of the Games. And the country had just seen us do well in Torino. In Newfoundland, where Brad Gushue had won the gold medal for Canada in curling, the Olympic atmosphere was so stunning, they’re changing the names of shopping malls and schools and highways for Brad Gushue. They’re talking about the Gold Medal Highway! So the Games have a way of capturing the spirit in people. So we need to make sure that the Games have that impact all across Canada in every home. And as we’ve said for five years, if we have to take the Olympic message to every Canadian one at a time, then that is what we’re going to do. The Games belong to all of us but it’s setting up wonderfully to be a spectacular event.

You know, I often wonder what history will have to say about us. You know, the Games are about sport and are about athletes. But they’re also about unleashing the very best in every one of us. They’re about letting the star, the hero out in every person. They’re about a country rising to the occasion…truly rising to the occasion. You know, we can all be better; we can all do better. Last Saturday I was in Kelowna talking to an organization called “Celebrate Canada.” The only function for this organization is to celebrate the great, good fortune that there is a Canada. It’s a fantastic event. And when I went to the airport, I was reflecting on what I’d heard at that meeting and this elderly gentleman, probably 80 years of age, came over and he sat beside me. And I’ll give you the exact quote. He sat beside me, he said, “You’re that Olympic guy.” I said, “Yes, I am. I hope that’s a good thing.” He said, “John, this generation of British Columbians will be measured by the success of your Committee.”

We are about to find out how good we are, about how good we can be. We’re about to discover that in Canada, in British Columbia and in our communities that absolutely anything we want to do is possible if we want to do it badly enough. This will be our time and it will be your time.

Thank you.