Mr. Speaker, welcome to Harperland, built for the modest sum of $2 million in taxpayers' money. This fake resort comes complete with a fake lake—even though the location is on the shore of Lake Ontario—and some comfy lakeside chairs where you can watch bucolic scenes on a giant screen.
The goal is to recreate Huntsville, in the riding of the Minister of Industry, a place you will not actually be able to see during the G8 and G20 summits. To be able to visit these facilities, you must be an accredited journalist, because this marketing pavilion is for you, and only you—whom the Conservative government is hoping to manipulate with this propaganda, because you are certainly not there to report on the facts.
And what does the rest of the world think about this? Who cares if the French foreign affairs minister, Bernard Kouchner, thinks that Harperland is costing too much money? All the Conservative government wants is to control the message as much as possible, at the expense of access to information.