Terror plus Olympics equals busted budget

I'm not sure which is worse; that Al Queda-brand terrorists want to blow up the House of Commons, or that Vancouver's police department is only now in the early stages of forming a dedicated counter-terrorism unit (see the summary here).

Six years after 9-11, Vancouver's finest are only in the "early stages"? Seven years after Ahmed Ressam (the would-be Los Angeles airport bomber) was caught at the US border? Years since Osama bin Ladin named Canada on his hit list of countries that would be targeted by Al Queda?

And today we've been reminded that Vancouver's Olympics has $175 million budgeted for security (see the summary here) - just over 10 per cent of what Turin budgeted to keep their Olympics safe ($1.4 billion).

With high fuel prices and a construction boom already causing cost overruns for our 2010 Olympics, the federal government better be willing to kick in some extra funding to keep the bad guys at bay.

tags: Vancouver, Olympics, 2010, terror, Canada, security, budget, cost overruns