Two-Year Advance Hotel Booking For Royal Canadian Mounted Police For 2010 Winter Games

Vancouver, Canada (AHN) - The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has booked two years in advance the entire Blue Horizon Hotel along Robson Street to serve as their accommodation while providing security for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The RCMP's advance booking covers the period late January to March 2010. It assures them of 300 beds and parking. The entire deal is estimated to cost between $720,000 to $1.5 million, before taxes, based on existing hotel rates.

The Blue Horizon is just one of three sites where the security forces for the games will stay. The Mounties' Integrated Security Unit, made up of the RCMP, Vancouver police and Canadian Forces, is searching for a floating hotel at the province's port which a bed capacity of at least 5,000.

Corp. Gursharn Bernier, spokeswoman of the RCMP, explained the value of its choice of accommodation sites. "The benefit of having something like that is we are not adding to the (traffic) congestion on the road... Metro Vancouver is busy as it is and when the Olympics hit, it will be even busier with tourists. We're not adding pollutants in the air and (everything) can be taken care of under one roof in terms of briefings and places to be fed," Bernier told the Globe and Mail.

Meanwhile, for the Summer Games in Beijing, Canadian athletes are aptly donning "Made-in-China" sports wear, which has incensed some MPs for passing up the chance to promote the country's textile industry already reeling from competition from Asian countries.

MP Paul Dewar said, quoted by the Toronto Star, "This is our Olympic team. We should be ensuring that all of our Olympic athletes are proudly wearing Canadian-made textiles and all of their uniforms should be made in Canada."

The Canadian Olympic Committee defended its decision because the sports attire makers would sew uniforms not only for Canada's official delegation, but also for sale to the public as souvenir items. "Times have changed considerably... The reality is that there's no longer manufacturing capacity in Canada that can meet the volume needs that are necessary to manufacture particularly the replica clothing that is sold to the public," Chris Rudge, chief executive officer of the COC told the Toronto Star.