According to Toronto City website, the G20 submit will produce broad-based benefits for the local community. Toronto’s tourism, business, culture and environment leadership will be world spotlight and lasting international business relationships will be developed.
Now, lets take a step back and look at the past G20 events, London in 2008 and Pittsburgh in 2009. In case of London, 150 groups, including unions, charities, environmental campaigners and faith organizations in London, U.K., came together amid anger at the £19 million cost of staging the conference at a time of economic downturn. The final cost for the Summit was four times that figure, £76 million or $114 million. 2009 G20 Summit in Pittsburgh was significantly cheaper, the final price tag was only $12.2 million.
The cost of the Summit in Toronto is now reaching $1.1 B. You would think in these tough economic times our government will act more responsibly and show some restrain in spending. These so called lasting international business business relationship is not directly dependent on how much we spend on a conference. Canada is the second largest country in the world so surely we could have found a less populated area to hold this Summit.
It is also not clear what we are showcasing in terms of environmental leadership, we have the largest CO2 emission per capita. The public has the right to question this event and how it is been promoted as a good thing !
It is also argued this Summit has been very helpful in establishing the Financial regulations, notably Financial Stability Board (FSB) and strengthening the International Financial Institution (IFIs), including expansion of resources and the improvement of precautionary lending facilities of the IFIs.
These were the same leaders that didn’t manage to prevent the meltdown in 2008 and subsequently in Greece and other countries in Euro zone. G20 Summit can really do with a permanent building and with a price tag of $1.1 B, we could have easily build one or two somewhere in Canada.
For those downtown businesses who are impacted the federal government has developed an exgratia policy to provide payments for certain business losses stemming from security measures taken locally to protect the leaders. For more information, you can visit g20.gc.ca/important-notices/#payments or call 1-877-750-6042
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