Olympians Did Canada Proud

(Aired on March 1, 2010)

A week ago, I sat here criticizing those who were decrying the lack of success of Canadian athletes at the Olympics, people who criticized the Own
the Podium campaign. I said that we were successful with what we had already accomplished.

A week later, I sit here again, proud of our country not only as a country which has run a remarkable Olympics, but one in which our athletes did, in fact, Own the Podium in so many ways. We had the most Olympic gold medals of any host country at the Winter Olympics. Not only that, we had the most gold medals of any country in the Winter Olympics. We finished third overall behind perennial powerhouses Germany and the U.S. and less than a handful of medals short of second place overall. If you wish to call that unsuccessful, I would suggest you give your head a very serious shake.

But more than the medals, the coming together of the Olympics after a bit of a shaky start, and tragedy on the luge run, was the coming together of the community. Vancouver's games will be rememebered for the tremendous community spirit, the awesome display of pride evident everywhere you walked in downtown Vancouver. It was truly a memorable event, and you can say what you will, these Olympics will go down as some of the best Winter Olympics ever. There is no question about that. Were we perfect? No. But did we perform? Absolutely. In virtually every respect. Did we draw attention to our country in a positive way? Despite the best efforts of some naysayers, we did exactly that.

Our province is not without fault. We have work to do to improve social conditions for many down and out. We have to come back from an economic downturn. We await with interest the government's view for us in this week's budget. But for the past few weeks, we turned our best face to the world, and we did ourselves proud.