"How can the prime minister preach austerity and restraint to Canadians and his G20 colleagues when he has lost control of the cost of his own summit?" -- Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff (BBC)I keep hearing the word ‘austerity’ these days. I swear it must be the word of the month. So I must ask: in these “austere” times, exactly where is the sense in spending over $1 billion to host a meeting of leaders that already meet several times a year?
I’m not saying that it’s not important for these leaders to meet. I just don’t see that they need to have this meeting. Do we really need two G20 summits a year? This bunch met just nine months ago in Pittsburgh. They’re going to meet again in Seoul this November! I have friends that I don’t get to see that often.
Now, I trust that our leaders are smart. But regardless of their levels of intelligence or a particular expertise that they might each possess, these leaders are not the experts who have been tasked with studying and implementing policy. Let’s be honest, they are the faces we attach to the efforts of hundreds of people whose job it is to agree on, implement and follow up on the decisions made at these large summits. There are thousands of people working 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday trying to get this stuff right. No one’s expecting to save the world in a weekend. So why all the fuss?
Regulation of the financial sector? We’ve had summits to deal with that; Jim Flaherty’s been going. The finance ministers and central bank governors have met three times so far this year – February, April and June – with at least one more to come before the end of this year.
Climate change? We’ve had a bunch of summits for that too. Stephen Harper went to Copenhagen. Not much got done.
The foreign ministers of the G8 countries just met in March in Gatineau, Quebec in preparation for the real deal! Lawrence Cannon must’ve been pissed. Harper and Flaherty got to take a plane and all he got was a drive to Gatineau.
Nuclear non-proliferation? We just had that one and it was much bigger than the G20. 189 nations spent an entire month cooped up together talking about nukes. Barack Obama was so excited for the NPT conference that he threw a special “invite only” pre-party for 49 world leaders to come to Washington and discuss the threat of nuclear material ending up in the hands of 'terrorists'.
So what are these leaders really going to talk about that they haven't already been discussing? A recent article in the Toronto Star tells us to not underestimate the importance of face time. I could understand if a peace treaty were to be signed at the G20. But these are countries that already have diplomatic, military and economic ties. There are embassies and multilateral think tanks and regional cooperation treaties and defence pacts and trade missions and all sorts of mechanisms in place that keep our countries in contact with one another. These leaders get to hang out a few times a year. And for all those other times there are calling cards and satellite link ups and internet chat rooms and Skype. They could've saved us all the hassle and just had a nice little conference call. Maybe not, but you get the point.
A Skype-sponsored summit would've saved us the trouble of building a fake lake (I still don't understand this one, given that Lake Ontario is just a streetcar ride away). We could've left the trees in the ground. Bay and Front wouldn't resemble a garrison. And I'd be able to use my cellphone without having to worry about dropped calls.But all jokes aside, my real problem is the cost. The 2009 London Summit came in at about £50 million; about £8 million (CDN $12.5 million) of which was spent on security. So how did the G8 Summit in Huntsville and the G20 Summit in Toronto end up spending 75 times as much on security (an estimate $930 milion)? The final bill for the two summits may work out to about $833,000 a minute or $50 million an hour.
Last week the UN issued an appeal for $71-million in humanitarian aid to respond to the Kyrgyzstan refugee crisis. 71 million is to 1 billion as 71 cents is to $10.
A drought in West Africa is threatening to cause a famine that could affect 10 million people in two of the world’s poorest countries, Chad and Niger. Aid agencies have issued an urgent appeal for $10 million to try and avert a human catastrophe.
So an hour and a half of our G-summit budget could cover Kyrgyzstan’s refugees and just 12 minutes could potentially save 10 million people from starving.
It’s hard to know exactly where Canadians stand on the two summits, especially given the cost. Two polls taken this month suggest that Canadians do not believe the costs are justified. Most people polled didn’t expect much to be accomplished. That said, three quarters still felt that the summits were important.
I wonder how they would respond if they knew that a penny out of every security dollar could go towards feeding the 1.2 million children currently facing malnutrition in Niger.
The G8 Summit runs from June 25-26
The G20 Summit runs from June 26-27
