Now the truth about the costs.

[PIK]

Now that the media has played it's games, now it is time for what really went on.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Tories+transparent+security+costs+watchdog/3193527/story.html

[Molly]

Page cautioned that his 12-page report, which was completed in less than one month, does not provide a value-for-money analysis.

[waldo]

whaaa! Truth to power - hey, PIK?

...that there is not enough international information available to draw conclusions about the G20 in Toronto.

Page cautioned that his 12-page report, which was completed in less than one month, does not provide a value-for-money analysis.

3 day $1.1 Billion... boondoggle.

[Keepitsimple]

Opposition critics have lambasted the government for a lack of transparency on the summit security costs, but Page found the government was relatively open on the overall bill, although not on the cost breakdown.

"It is the PBO's observation that the government of Canada has been relatively transparent with regards to the planned 'total' costs of the summits," said the report. "PBO's research of publicly available information indicates that no other host country has provided 'total' security costs to this level of detail."

[PIK]

whaaa! Truth to power - hey, PIK?

3 day $1.1 Billion... boondoggle.

Sorry a boondoggle is when the liberals steal 100 million or waste billions on a gun registry that does not work. Try try thou.

[M.Dancer]

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2008/06/26/chretien-gomery-cp-ball.jpg

Boondoggle

[waldo]

Sorry a boondoggle is when the liberals steal 100 million or waste billions on a gun registry that does not work. Try try thou.

PIK, why is your office working overtime to attempt to diminish... uhhh... rationalize the 3 day $1.1 Billion dollar... boondoggle? That's one hell of a Harper photo-op - hey?

[eyeball]

Kevin Page, in a report released Tuesday, also concludes the Harper government has been "relatively transparent" about the price tag compared to the silence of other countries in revealing their total costs.

Again I ask, why are we so eager to blow a billion dollars on hosting a liar's summit? So we can sign a pile of agreements we just negotiated with them?

I just don't get it.

[Molly]

Again I ask, why are we so eager to blow a billion dollars on hosting a liar's summit? So we can sign a pile of agreements we just negotiated with them?

I just don't get it.

'Xactly. Even if that's what it appropriately costs - a thought I find highly unlikely, bordering on the preposterous- but if it actually does really cost that much, then it's not worth it! and a reformat of the process is desperately, wildly overdue.

[M.Dancer]

I just don't get it.

At last we agree on something.

[Open Government]

My concern is that the suggestion of a post-summit post-mortem of the expenditure will have no value; our tax dollars will have already been spent and it will be too little too late. Why aren't laws changed so that a certain level of expenditure automatically requires an examination by the PBO some time prior to the money actually flowing out of the doors of Parliament? This would not be dissimilar to how things work in the real, corporate world.

http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/

[August1991]

From link in the OP:

"It is the PBO's observation that the government of Canada has been relatively transparent with regards to the planned 'total' costs of the summits," said the report. "PBO's research of publicly available information indicates that no other host country has provided 'total' security costs to this level of detail."

Page noted, however, there is a lack of public information on the details, such as how the RCMP will spend its "sizable share" -- $450 million. The report also finds that it costs significantly more to use the RCMP for security that it would to deploy the Canadian military.

Look, I'm not against eating food but that doesn't mean I would spend $1000 on a properly expensed and accurately billed restaurant meal. These summits are now budgeted to cost $1.2 billion. That is too much. It doesn't matter what summits cost elsewhere or whether the services were properly invoiced or contracts signed after fair tender. It's just too much money. Canadians have other priorities.

Stephen Harper (and Flaherty) are going to go before the public in the fall and present a budget with a variety spending cuts. They will face a storm of protest when they try to defend a cut of $10 million, on grounds that Canadian taxpayers can't afford the expense, when Harper and his crew just spent $1.2 billion on a summit of a few days.

What kind of husband can insist that the kids eat hamburger and the wife manage without the new shoes - on grounds of belt-tightening - when he himself just spent $3000 on a new widescreen TV? If the husband argues that the TV was a good deal at 30% off, he just adds insult to injury.

The optics of this boondoggle are politically atrocious.

-----

I have never particularly liked Kevin Page. I met him a while ago and he struck me as a typical, narrow-thinking Ottawa bureaucrat. I am very suspicious of any claims to objectivity. It seems that he wants to model the PBO on the US CBO. It is not the role of bureaucrats to play the political game.

Edited June 24, 2010 by August1991

[Keepitsimple]

The cost is all relative - as Kevin Page says - we don't KNOW what other countries have really spent because that information is not available. It's quite possible - maybe even probably that $900 million on Security is proportional to what other countries have spent. We simply don't know - we only know that the Conservatives have provided a pretty accurate total and the other countries haven't.

As to whether these summits are worth it or whether they should be held someplace where the protestors and terrorists can't get at them - well, that's a different concern....but I'm sure if they were held on an island, there would be a huge outcry from the Lefties that it was an affront to democracy.

As to whether the Government should have hosted the summits at all - what do you think the opposition and the media would have said if the Conservatives had refused to host the summits and let someone else do it? They would have been lambasted for having small minds and turning their backs on the new world.

Let's face it, these poor saps just can't win. Sun TV - bring it on!

[M.Dancer]

As to whether these summits are worth it or whether they should be held someplace where the protestors and terrorists can't get at them - well, that's a different concern

It would be funnier if they were held on the north western shores of Hud Bay during the Polar bears maeting season....and that dinners feature traditional northern foods of whale, musk ox and seal meat...

[Smallc]

The cost is all relative - as Kevin Page says - we don't KNOW what other countries have really spent because that information is not available. It's quite possible - maybe even probably that $900 million on Security is proportional to what other countries have spent.

Stockwell Day gave a number of $1B in security for Japan.

[Jack Weber]

It would be funnier if they were held on the north western shores of Hud Bay during the Polar bears maeting season....and that dinners feature traditional northern foods of whale, musk ox and seal meat...

Plus...All delegates would be required to arrive in kayaks they paddled...

[Shady]

People who continue to trash the G8/G20 don't just understand the broader global/international aspects of it.

The G8/G20 meetings are held on a revolving basis. It was our turn. Are the costs high? Yep. But unfortunately, protecting world leaders from possible assassination is very costly.

After this summer, Canada won't have to host this summit again for quite a long time. The excuse about the existence of poverty, etc is infantile. There's always poverty. Even during good times. It's the same type of thing that's brought up during the once every 25 years we hold the Olympics as well.

With or without security costs, cuts in government spending are going to have to take place now, and for the next several years, regardless.

Oh, and the lake cost is actually $57,000 dollars, not $1 million dollars.

That's just alarmist nonsense.

[August1991]

Shady, I have said this above and I will say it now again.

People who continue to trash the G8/G20 don't just understand the broader global/international aspects of it.

Stephen Harper just spent $3000 on a widescreen TV, on the grounds that the family needs to understand the broader picture. When Harper asks the rest of the family to eat at home, and takes our credit cards away; we'll all ask Harper about his 120Hz 60" screen.

How can Harper justify a $1.2 billion summit for himself and his cronies, and then ask Canadians to accept any kind of budget cut?

Shady, this is the political reality of Harper's summits. I am surprised that Harper didn't see this and can only conclude that Harper is an amateur.

Edited June 24, 2010 by August1991

[Peter F]

Ah, but now he's a 'Wordl-class' amateur. Oh and how we love that 'World-Class' stuff!

[Argus]

Stockwell Day gave a number of $1B in security for Japan.

I don't care how much it cost elsewhere. The cost is obscene.

Now, why don't I hate the tories for it? I roll my eyes and shake my head and mutter obcenities, sure, in the end, I think they made a mistake. I think they planned on a simple G8 up in the boonies, just like all the other G8s have been in recent memory. But whoever was planning security - well I just don't know. I just don't. Where the hell do the RCMP get off charging over $100k per cop? That's over a year's salary. WTH?! I really hope the AG examines these numbers and comes back to us with some idea of why they're so high. Why did the cost for the RCMP rise four-fold from the last summit? Half the cost of this summit - $507 million - is for the RCMP. Why? I want to see what the mounties spent that money on

I again cut the tories some slack here. In projecting what this thing would oost they probably looked at what the last one, out in the Alberta boonies, cost, and probably didn't know the RCMP costs would be four times greater per cop. Again, I ask - why are they?

So then, suddenly, the G20, which wasn't supposed to be held this year, was rammed in on top of the G8. That wasn't Canada's decision. By the time that decision was made, the political costs of scrapping everything that had been planned for Huntsville - not to mention the money already wasted - were deemed too great, so they had to hold a second summit, and this one in a larger venue.

Now let me say to begin with that these summits have gotten out of hand. Their inherent value, in allowing heads of government to get together and discuss issues of concern to all is obvious. But why couldn't 20 heads of state, each with say, 20 staff, have been fit into Huntsville? The Deerhurst Resort is set up for conferences, including large ones, with rooms which can hold 85 people at a U shaped table, or up to 1000 in theatre style seating. Granted, it only has 400 rooms, but can't these illustrious heads of state make do with that?

Probably not, in reality. I'm guessing Obama alone is probably bringing at least a hundred, maybe two hundred if you count his secret service staff. That's why these bloody things are so expensive, because the heads of state can't go to the bathroom without two dozen flunkeys trailing them.

So they go to Toronto, rush rush rush, and again the mounties cost a freaking fortune, and they need to be prepared for any possibility, from riots to terrorist assaults. And the costs skyrocket.

And since I don't think the Liberals would have done any more to hold down costs the only thing I can go on is - have they learned anything from this? I don't know. I like to think so. I like to think it's not their natural inclination to be extravagant, and that they'll find out why this thing costs so much and make sure the next one doesn't. That's really the only reassurance I can hope for here.

I still want to know why the costs for the mounties went up fourfold.

[dre]

I think part of the problem is not necessarily Harper, or the costs for these conferences in Canada but the culture of these organizations as a whole. They seem low-tech... the business world doesnt have these kind of conferences anymore... and they seem out of touch with reality, and the debt problem facing member nations. I can see each country needing to bring 50 or 100 people to these meetings but I think the whole thing should get scaled waaaaay back.

[scribblet]

So here we have it, the truth is out, it's not what the media has been portraying it as. The only alternative is to not have a summit at all, is that an option?

[Shady]

Shady, I have said this above and I will say it now again.

Stephen Harper just spent $3000 on a widescreen TV, on the grounds that the family needs to understand the broader picture. When Harper asks the rest of the family to eat at home, and takes our credit cards away; we'll all ask Harper about his 120Hz 60" screen.

I have no idea what this nonsense is suppose to mean. Sorry dude.

How can Harper justify a $1.2 billion summit for himself and his cronies, and then ask Canadians to accept any kind of budget cut?

Like I've already stated, and is already fact. Regardless of this 1 billion in cost, Canadians are going to have to accept budget cuts. They're necessary. This G20 expense has nothing to do with it. This argument of yours is completely infantile.

That being said, it was our turn to host the summits. So I guess every 8 years or so, we may have to hold our nose, and host an event like this. I don't think it's unreasonable. If you feel like it is, then we can agree to disagree.

[Shady]

So here we have it, the truth is out, it's not what the media has been portraying it as. The only alternative is to not have a summit at all, is that an option?

That seems to be what some in this forum are suggesting. No summits. No Olympics. No nothing. Not until our Canadian utopia is fully complete. With absolutely no pain, or suffering, or hunger, or disease, or anything bad of any kind. After that, they'll give us permission to participate in these things.

[scribblet]

Of course, we should all empty our measly bank accounts and hand it all over to those who have less than we do - sure.. Meanwhile the Liberals are going off on a junket to China, but that's okay.

Can you imagine the optics of using the military instead of the cops, I can see it now

soldiers on the streets

with guns

yadda yadda :lol: