The inexplicably ludicrous billion-dollar security tab for the twin G20 and G8 summits, which soar far beyond any rational explanation when compared with similar summits held as recently as last September, is gaining political traction in Ottawa.
The Auditor General has been asked to probe the unfathomably escalating security budget by the Liberals. The parliamentary budget officer also has been called in to investigate by the New Democrats, and Kevin Page has agreed to give it a closer look.
No amount of righteous government bluster about living in post-9/11 protection paranoia, last week's 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.
This is Canada, not Kandahar. In a London that has seen subway and bus terrorist bombings, the official security tab for its G20 gathering last March was $30-million.
Yet one month to the day before the G20 convenes for a dinner and half-day Sunday meeting behind the barricades, the protection tab reportedly surged another $160-million without explanation.
If that's true, total security costs now surpass $1.1-billion for about 16 hours of actual social and formal meetings at both summits - and that doesn't include the $100-million budgeted for host country organization and hospitality. At that ferocious spending rate, taxpayers will be on the hook for $75-million per hour of leadership schmoozing.
If there were tangible expectations of globe-enhancing accomplishment, this might be theoretically defensible.
But my diplomat golfing partner is undoubtedly correct - the broad-stroke results have already been pre-negotiated and the final press release need only be fine-tuned on June 28.
That's the true outrage in hosting a monetary squander without historic equal, particularly given what could be accomplished putting that much cash to work in the real world.
The tab for this security overkill could cover a third of the estimated international cost for the African family planning initiative, or pay two-thirds of Canada's 10-year humanitarian assistance program in Afghanistan.
A government that still hasn't delivered on its promise to beef up police forces could hire 2,500 officers for five years, buy a million advanced Tasers, pay a year's salary for 23,000 soldiers, procure a total of 366 LAVs or purchase five Black Hawk helicopters for every hour the leaders are yakking.
None of the government's subject-to-inflation estimates include serious disruptions to Toronto business, the drop in scared-off tourism from shutdowns of the CN Tower and Rogers Centre, or the productivity loss from motorists seething in traffic jams courtesy of closed expressways into the core.
Utter cluster-fornication.
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