{"id":3906,"date":"2010-05-28T14:33:03","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T18:33:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=3906"},"modified":"2010-10-16T11:48:13","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T15:48:13","slug":"is-it-too-late-to-cancel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/05\/28\/is-it-too-late-to-cancel\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it too late to cancel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> rounds up the (almost unanimous) pundits’ opinions about the billion-dollar-boondoggle-summit-set:<\/p>\n

\n

Is it too late to cancel the G8 and G20 summits?<\/p>\n

The National Post<\/em>\u2018s Don Martin for the win: \u201cNo amount of righteous government bluster about living in post-9\/11 protection paranoia, last week\u2019s bank firebombing in Ottawa or the precedent of hosting two back-to-back summits can explain how an $18-million security tab for the G20 in Pittsburgh last September, which involved 4,000 police, must balloon to a billion dollars in Toronto requiring 10,000 cops on the ground.\u201d Yup. It\u2019s outrageous, and the government seems very oddly . . . proud<\/em> of it. We can hardly wait for the Auditor-General and Parliamentary Budget Officer to find out just where this money went. Especially in a climate where Canadians are thoroughly cheesed off about government spending in the first place, it\u2019s not too much of a stretch to say this is the sort of issue that might bring down a government.<\/p>\n

\u201cA case of bureaucracy gone wild,\u201d is Jeffrey Simpson\u2018s uncontroversial verdict in The Globe and Mail<\/em>, \u201cor planning gone crazy, of fear sinking itself into every official\u2019s and security person\u2019s heart.\u201d Imagine what we could have bought with that $1-billion! A bunch more Canada Research Chairs, or a whack of \u201cclean-energy projects,\u201d or assistance for \u201ccultural groups\u201d — so sleepy<\/em> — or, hey, now we\u2019re talking, a massive injection of cash for infrastructure on aboriginal reserves. Or, as Simpson says, \u201cwhatever.\u201d Almost literally anything would be better. We\u2019d arguably be better off flushing the $1-billion down the john.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For those of you looking forward to suffering through the event, here’s the official map of the restricted area around the Metro Convention Centre:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The best advice — unless you’re hoping for a run-in with the police — is to avoid Toronto for that weekend (plus a few days in either direction).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley rounds up the (almost unanimous) pundits’ opinions about the billion-dollar-boondoggle-summit-set: Is it too late to cancel the G8 and G20 summits? The National Post\u2018s Don Martin for the win: \u201cNo amount of righteous government bluster about living in post-9\/11 protection paranoia, last week\u2019s bank firebombing in Ottawa or the precedent of hosting two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,25,84,53],"tags":[52,432,578,624,322,98,334,258,207],"class_list":["post-3906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-economics","category-government","category-politics","tag-absurd","tag-diplomacy","tag-g20","tag-maps","tag-nannystate","tag-police","tag-security","tag-stephenharper","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-110","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3906"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5877,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3906\/revisions\/5877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}