Did Any Economists Weigh In On $1B Spending For G8/G20 Meetings? 

For those unfamiliar, the G8 and G20 summits take place at the end of June with the G8 being held in Huntsville, Ontario and the G20 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The goal of the 72 hour summit is for the leaders of the included foreign governments to meet and tackle the current landscape of economics on a global scale. In other words, a meeting of powerful decision makers to debate how best to make and spend money. Makes sense to me. Oh but wait a second, the clarity of the decision to spend $1 Billion of Canadian taxpayer’s money on just security is very blurry now. Did I have a say in this? What if I don’t want to pay this money when the meeting itself has continued to draw more and more protesters and demonstrators because of this very reason amongst other causes?

In advance of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, many citizens of Canada were upset with the mounting costs including the figure spent on providing security for the games. The games were very successful and if you were partying along Robson or Granville Streets the police presence was high and the majority of incidents were issues of public alcohol consumption prompting the BC Liquor Stores to shut down early. So now even though the G8/G20 Summits will span over 72 hours, the interesting point to be made is that the 17 days of the Olympics security costs were around that same $1B figure – we may never really know as the RCMP and Federal Government have covered up the actual dollars spent.

So what do you think? Should our government being spending $1 Billion of your money for security during the G8/G20 Summits or is it just overkill and a demon of its own creation?