In 2002, the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Olympic Bid Corp released their now infamous "Bid Book" listing various promises and expenses associated with the proposal to have Vancouver host the 2010 Games. Of these, none was odder than the price tag for Olympic security, listed at a bargain basement low $175 million. Olympic critics, this writer included, noted that this number made little sense, particularly as security at the Salt Lake City games in 2002 had officially cost well over $300 million. We now know that the Salt Lake City numbers were misreported and that the actual tab stood at $1.3 billion or more. Security costs for the Kananaskis G8 meeting, also in 2002—a three-day long affair for some world leaders—had also been over $300 million, and the security picture for this meeting included only two venues that presented vastly simpler problems than those associated with what is now over 100 Olympic venues.

Nonetheless, the Bid Corp, and later its successor organization, VANOC, held tight to the $175 million projection, snootily asserting that they had consulted with "security experts" (who were never named) and the RCMP. But documents obtained in 2007 by the Work Less Party under FOI legislation showed that the RCMP had never actually been consulted before the Bid Corp invented this number. Furthermore, both the provincial and federal governments had known about the lie, yet went along with Bid Corp/VANOC in the initial deception, becoming essentially complicit in promoting what can only be described as a fraud against the public. Succeeding years have demonstrated that something was indeed amiss in the Bid Corp security projections: Security for Athens in 2004 cost $1.5 billion, Torino in 2006 was $1.4 billion, Beijing remains unknown but is surely vastly higher yet; and security costs for London's 2012 Games are now expected to top $2 billion. For Athens, the $1.5 billion could not stop a man in a clown suit from jumping into the Olympic swimming pool or prevent another fellow in a tutu from tackling the lead marathon runner.

How could the Bid Corp and all levels of government get it so wrong? Answer: they didn't get it wrong by any mistakes made in calculating the costs, as the federal government would later claim. They got it wrong because they were afraid of losing public support for the bid, and so they made it wrong. This month, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, Stockwell Day, finally admitted part of the truth: the real cost, still not including the Vancouver Police, will range from $400 million to $1 billion. The likelihood is that this number is also a bald-faced lie, an attempt to cushion the shock for the citizenry when the real number could end up being vastly higher still.

All of this leads to the inescapable conclusion that all levels of government really have no idea what it will cost and no idea therefore what the VANOC bottom line really will be. And the reason for not having a bottom line is because they simply don't know what threat—if any—the 2010 Games face.

Documents obtained by Work Less Party and some journalists in the mainstream media suggest that different government agencies have identified three threats. In increasing order of hazard to people and property—and the ability of the IOC and VANOC to put on a successful TV spectacular—these are: protests, crime, and terrorism.

Protests anywhere near Games venues have to be banned according to the Host City agreement between the IOC and the host jurisdiction. The potential problem is that, for some in the estimated television audience of over three billion, protests could cast doubt on the legitimacy of the organizing committee, or worse, the IOC.

Protest signs look just awful on TV according to the IOC, but it could be worse: imagine that instead of simply holding placards, protesters are pissed off enough about the expensive circus to want to disrupt it, or to even shut it down. This is one of those nightmare scenarios that organizing committees and governments lose sleep over, so the obvious solution is to turn the security apparatus loose on such threats. However, to ensure there are no protests, the security forces have to ensure there are no protesters, a hard thing to do without massively violating Charter rights. Failing this, the police and military have to deal with the protests in the streets, but tear gas in the air is breathed by protesters and tourists alike, and truncheon-swinging cops on horseback are just as likely to wallop Native grandmothers as 20-something anti-poverty protesters—or worse, well-heeled visitors. It's a nasty dilemma for the government and security people for which there is no correct solution.

In essence, it represents a sin of omission because the threat of protests wouldn't exist if governments had kept their various promises. That is, if promises about Native rights and treaties had been kept, there likely would be no Native protesters; if promises about help for those in poverty had been kept, there would be no anti-poverty protesters. Protecting the Games for the privileged against those who have been neglected by the system has created the ultimate paradox. With any rational government or non-corrupt Olympics, the problem would never have arisen in the first place.

The last category—terrorism—represents a "sin of commission": Canada is fighting a brutal counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan on dubious pretenses and has aided the Americans in their assault on the people of Iraq. Securing the Games from "blowback" by those who may want revenge for real or imagined injuries represents a substantive failure of any clear analysis about why someone might see the Games as the perfect venue for payback. It's not because of the comic-book level theorizing of George Bush or Stephen Harper that terrorists attack us because they hate our rights and freedoms, but rather, as Osama Bin Laden said in a recording played on Al Jazeera, they attack us because we are attacking them. It really can't be much simpler than this: If Luxembourg were hosting the Games, would there be a terrorist threat? No.

The only security concern left is crime: pickpockets, cyber crime, ticket scams and the like, essentially the sorts of crimes that follow any large event. Do these need helicopter gunships and F18s in the air, frigates patrolling Howe Sound, or thousands of police and soldiers deployed along the 120 km route from Vancouver to Whistler? No, of course not.

Thus the massive security budget for the Olympics starkly highlights our stunning failure to deal with our own follies at home and abroad. It begins with lies and a fraud upon the public, it extends to the insanity of having that same public pay for pseudo protection from threats that need not be there, and it finally ends with the loss of civil liberties for us all. Adding to this is the reality that no measure of security can, no matter how much money is spent, stop all protests, prevent all crime, or deal with all blowback. As the 2010 Games grow closer, as security costs and infringements of civil rights grow, for many in the public, the Olympic motto of "higher, faster, stronger" may well be replaced by "dumb, dumber, dumbest."