That was the first question I raised with them—I gave them the example of an auto industry sponsor who wanted to advertise his support for a given Olympic athlete on a car. They replied that as they could not be sure of the words that would be used, they wanted to protect the terms “Olympic” and “Paralympic”. But that is not really the objective of the bill. The true objective is to protect the millions of dollars that are given to athletes now and that will be given after Vancouver 2010 as well. To my mind, that is very important.
I was around before the existence of VANOC and all of the sponsors. It is an entirely different ball game now that we have all these funded athletes. It cost me a lot of money to get where I am today. Today's athletes have a huge advantage. There is a big difference between the amount of money provided by major sponsors and the amount provided through VANOC and Mr. Jackson's Own the Podium 2010 program.