G-8, G-20 security tab Canada $897 million
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Few Canadians expected that hosting world leaders at back-to-back summit meetings here this weekend would be cheap or convenient. With downtown Toronto a security maze, businesses boarded up and even the beloved Blue Jays baseball team sent packing, the meetings have met all expectations for aggravation.
But it is the cost of providing security that has elicited gasps.
The latest government estimate is $897 million - about $12 million per hour for three days of summitry - near what the government spends per year on the war in Afghanistan. "The cost of these summits is completely out of whack and extravagant and exorbitant," said Don Davies, a New Democratic Party member of Parliament.
Ever since the infamous Battle in Seattle, the World Trade Organization summit meeting in 1999 in which violent street protests led to 600 arrests and $3 million in property damage, security has been a prime concern for international summit meetings and the costs have soared.
But critics point out that Canada's security expenses are several times larger than those of other recent summit meeting hosts. The security costs for the Group of 20 meeting last year in Pittsburgh, for example, was about $95 million, according to a study by Canada's Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Until this weekend, the highest security cost for a Group of 20 summit meeting was $345 million for the 2008 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan, the report said.
Government officials have defended the costs as necessary. "The cost is expensive, but the security is worth it," Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told Parliament last month.
Since Seattle, other summit meeting hosts have sought to cut costs and improve security by holding the meetings in remote resort areas that are easy to seal off. Security for the 2002 Group of 8 meeting in the resort of Kananaskis, Alberta, cost about $217 million. The 2004 meeting at Sea Island, Ga., separated from the mainland by four miles of march, cost about $135 million to secure.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/27/MN8E1E5IIE.DTL
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