Hard to disagree with anything Rex Murphy says here:
Summits are useless, expensive and potentially dangerous anachronisms.
Let’s take the G20 summit, which will be held June 26-27 in Toronto. No one from the general public will be meeting with the world leaders — summits are not for mingling. So why are the leaders gathering in the middle of Canada’s most populous city when the very idea of interacting with any of the city’s population is absolutely impossible?
Once inside the summit venue the leaders — and their insanely bloated retinues — will be almost antiseptically sealed off from every other bit of Toronto. It’s all fortified meeting rooms and security-proofed hotels for them. Effectively, they will come to Toronto, stay behind a shield of impassable security and talk to leaders they’ve already met. It makes zero sense.
If you’re of a Toronto-centric, anti-Stephen Harper mindset (that would be most Toronto voters), you might attribute it to Harper recreating the famous pacification policy of Henry II: imposing the costs of supporting the royal court by visiting the powerful nobles (that is, the victim can’t refuse the honour of hosting the King, and then has no money or time to plot or scheme against same).
Update: Kelly McParland makes another good point:
Hard as it is to fathom, the Conservatives appear to have successfully created a bigger waste of money than the Liberal gun registry. It took a long time — they’ve had 15 years to study how the Liberals went about wasting so much money on an agency that costs a lot and doesn’t work — but they’ve managed.
In doing so, they’ve disqualified themselves from ever complaining again about money-wasting Liberal schemes, or the gun registry itself for that matter. If Tories can blow a billion forcing everyone in Toronto to find somewhere else to spend the weekend of June 26-27, Liberals can force farmers to get shotgun licences.
