CanWest News Service
OTTAWA - The Canadian Olympic Committee said Friday it is "disappointed" China excluded Vancouver, host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, and former host cities Montreal and Calgary from its torch relay route.
But COC chief executive Chris Rudge said he doesn't believe Canada is being snubbed as a result of ongoing tensions between Beijing and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government.
"Disappointed Yes. But I don't think it's a snub and I'm absolutely not going to lose any sleep over it," said Rudge, who added there's no tradition or protocol dictating that future or past host cities should be included in the torch relay.
However, he noted the torch for the 2004 games in Athens made a stop in Montreal, site of the 1976 Summer Games.
San Franciso, which has never hosted the Games, is the only U.S. stop.
"Clearly, one would have hoped that the next Games on the schedule, Vancouver 2010, would have been a priority for them. But that wasn't the case," said Rudge, who added it would be an enormous stretch to suggest China excluded Canada because of Beijing's publicly declared anger over Harper raising China's human rights record.
But one China-watcher said frosty Beijing-Ottawa relations may have been a factor resulting in Vancouver's omission.
Vancouver, like San Francisco, has a huge ethnic Chinese population and would be a logical choice if Canada-China relations were strong, noted Wenran Jiang, a political scientist and acting director of the University of Alberta's China Institute.
"But I'm not surprised that no Canadians cities were included," Jiang said. "I think the colder relationship definitely is a factor which might have contributed to Canadian cities not being included."
Paul Evans, chairman of the Vancouver-based Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, said the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 Vancouver-Whistler Games appear to be "isolated" from bilaterial tensions. "It strikes me as unlikely" that China would deliberately snub Canada on the torch route, he said.
Spokesmen for Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Trade Minister David Emerson, minister responsible for the 2010 Games, referred media questions Friday to Canadian Heritage. But a spokeswoman in that department also dodged the issue.
Officials in China's embassy here didn't return phone calls.
China's torch relay begins in Greece next March, will continue to Beijing, and will wind across Asia, Europe, North America, Africa, and then back to Asia and China before the torch lights the cauldron at the Aug. 8, 2008 opening ceremony in Beijing's National Stadium.
Vancouver Sun