Key IOC Evaluation Commission members are scheduled to arrive in Toronto today at 2:30 p.m., to begin their technical evaluation of the city’s bid Thursday.
The IOC team will be welcomed tonight at a brief TO-2008 cocktail reception at the Park Hyatt hotel in midtown Toronto, followed by a private dinner.
According to TO-2008 Chief Operating Officer Bob Richardson, the IOC members will receive token gifts of little value, and everything will be documented.
He said “we’ll use common sense. We’ll give them stuff like small coffee-table books on Toronto, something of that nature, you know, kitschy stuff”.
According to Richardson, the technical team members will each receive a briefcase in his or her hotel room with working materials, a cellphone and a hand-held e-mail device, all to be retrieved by the bid committee when the visit ends.
Richardson said, “they’ll also get things like flowers, fruit baskets, an umbrella if they need it, although we should have had muklucks for them”. Richardson was referring to the fact that Toronto has more than 20 centimetres of fresh snow on the ground, following a two-day snowfall.
Meanwhile, Canadian members of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned by the Chinese government, will hold a news conference in Toronto Thursday to called for the United Nations to censure China for its human rights violations.
And members of the anti-poverty groups Bread Not Circuses and the Toronto Disaster Relief Committee intend to meet with IOC evaluation commission officials Friday afternoon.
