This has been bothering me for a while now and I want to ask the opinion of some others attending General Council 40 in Kelowna.

Over the past few years (having been accelerated in the past few months), the Vancouver Olympics have overtaken the city of Vancouver and the province of BC (and much of the rest of Canada, in the form of advertising campaigns, etc.). But while most Canadians are reveling in the attention the world will soon focus on our country, injustice and discrimination and racism bubble just beneath the surface.

There has been a frightening crackdown on Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, with increases in ticketing largely targeting the areas homeless. Hundreds of people have also been evicted from slum-hotels in the neighbourhood in the wake of by-laws providing incentives for construction upgrades (ultimately aimed at getting these hotels to close down so that they might be refurbished and the neighbourhood "reformed"). Busloads of homeless have already been taken out of the city (some of them ending up in Kelowna) and these will only increase as February 2010 draws closer. A large percentage of those living in the slum-hotels of the Downtown Eastside are Aboriginal people, many of whom suffer from alcoholism or drug addiction, and many of whom are women and former residential school victims (or their children); the victims of hundreds of years of colonial injustice. The Downtown Eastside is an enromous, tragic case-study of the worst effects of the Residential Schools systems and Canadian colonialism.

In addition to the violations of the human rights of those living in the Downtown Eastside, the BC provincial government has passed numerous bills designed to help national and international business take advantage of and profit from the increased tourist traffic in BC around the Olympics. Unfortunately, many of these have expedited developments on traditional Aboriginal lands, and Aboriginal lands that are tied up in land claim negotiations. Large tracts of wilderness have been targetted for developments of ski hills, resorts, and tourist towns, all designed tot ake advantage of the increased toruist traffic BC is expecting. These developments are as we speak aggressively being pursued, despite much local resistance from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. The communities' appeals ae being ignored and protestors are being violently opressed. (For more details and extensive documentation of these Olympic-related injustices see www.no2010.com)

These are just a few of the things going on in BC as we speak. And in a few days 400 members of the United Church of Canada will descend upon Kelowna. Now, the United Church has been increasinly involved in living out the 1986 Apology, especially in the past triennium. There have been conferences, meetings, proposals, discussions, conversations; there has been discernment, soul-searching, planning, decision-making. But in a few days, all 400 commissioners will meet. And will not pause to even contemplate the injustice Aboriginal people in the province we will be meeting in are enduring. What are we really doing? In light of such injustice in our country that we have let pass by unnoticed, how can we not question the paths we have been taking? How can we not question the effectiveness, the impact that our actions are having? Where is all this discernment leading us? How can we be so blind in such an earnest, honest, effort at reforming ourselves?