Thank you, Ministers and staff, for attending this morning. It's appreciated.
Clearly, you're unapologetic, Minister Cannon, for the spending at this G-8/G-20 summit. Canadians understand that money needs to be spent for these summits. On behalf of Canadians, I would say, though, that we don't have the appetite for this kind of spending that clearly you do.
On May 31, 2010, the previous transport minister said, β...I can say very directly that at the Hokkaido summit held in Japan, the security costs were in excess of $1.5 billion.β
The day after, his colleague, the member from Brant, said, βThe one example that I would point out to the hon. member is, in Japan, when it hosted the G8, the costs were $1.7 billion just to hold the G8 in Japan.β
Now, that's $200 million more than what Minister Baird said earlier.
If you look at the Munk institute report from the Munk School for Global Affairs, it recites the cost of the Japan G-8 conference at $559 million, far, far less, exponentially less, than what was said by either of your colleagues in the House.
I'm wondering, Minister, how you can explain the difference between what was actually spent and what was reported by your colleagues in the House as to what was spent in Japan and why they would engage in that kind of hyperbole.