It seems the City of Toronto will be closed to its citizens so that foreign leaders can be isolated from Canadians. And this will be at a cost of nearly $1b to Canadian taxpayers? I am not opposed to globalization. I think we need G8 and G20 group meetings. I don't think we should close Toronto for them and I think spending this scale of money on them to be insane.
Spending dwarfs previous summits, but Ottawa argues no country has ever hosted both summits at once
Steven Chase Ottawa
Globe and Mail
The Harper government is preparing to spend close to $1-billion on security for world leaders gathering in Ontario this summer – meetings in which one of the top items on the agenda is reining in state profligacy.
The soaring security bill for safeguarding the late June Group of Eight and Group of 20 summits is now several orders of magnitude greater than the costs of similar meetings in Japan and Britain.
The Canadian government disclosed Tuesday that the total price tag to police the elite Group of Eight meeting in Muskoka, as well as the bigger-tent Group of 20 summit starting a day later in downtown Toronto, has already climbed to more than $833-million. It said it's preparing to spend up to $930-million for the three days of meetings that start June 25.
That price tag is more than 20 times the total reported cost for the April, 2009, G20 summit in Britain, with the government estimating a cost of $30-million, and seems much higher than security costs at previous summits – the Gleneagles G8 summit in Scotland, 2005, was reported to have spent $110-million on security, while the estimate for the 2008 G8 gathering in Japan was $381-million.
5 comments:
I don't really know enough about the situation to have an opinion one way or the other, but do have a friendly fact/math nit-pick: while it is much greater, 20x is not "several orders of magnitudes" greater. It is actually one order of magnitude greater. Even $30mil to $1bil is only two orders of magnitude greater.
Orders of magnitude is basically the number of zeroes - $30mil is has seven zeroes, and so is the seventh order of magnitude. $1bil has nine zeroes, and is the ninth order.
There may be an undisclosed particular threat.
This is another cost of 911. Our world has changed.
"There may be an undisclosed particular threat."
Then change where it is going to be held, or change the structure of the meetings entirely. Do they think the National Treasury is the horn of plenty?
This is absurd.
Where would you host it Okie? Do you really think they can change the venue that quickly?
You are living in fantasyland.
I have doubted the need for such meetings in the first place but the security threat is very real. You can't expect others to pay for it. We do not live in Greece.
Anon 11:01 a.m.
"Where would you host it Okie? Do you really think they can change the venue that quickly?
You are living in fantasyland."
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Anon, are you suggesting that these costs came as a surprise and were not anticipated? Do you think that those who claim to be in charge of the countries finances couldn't forecast this prior to making a decision to locate it in Tony Clements riding?
If so Anon, I suspect you live in the land of Jim Flaherty's Fiscal Conservatism. Either that or Oz.
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