I believe the G8-G20 debate is not a zero-sum game, that we should be actively pursuing our role within the G8. There is an agenda. We will have the leadership of the G8 next year, which is a terrific opportunity for Canada to highlight its ideas for global issues, but the time has come for the G20 as well.
I was always of the view that the G20 would be a reality when an issue demanded its presence. The global economic crisis has allowed the G20, at the leaders' level, to be the logical forum. The G8 was not legitimate, in terms of representing the powers that were necessary, to begin to have the dialogue across the interests of nationalities and countries to shape a collective strategy. So the G20, I think, is here to be an additional forum on the agenda of global governance, and that's to be welcomed.
I'd probably suggest there are some absences on that list that one might wish to address, but that's nuance. As long as the G20 credits itself in this crisis as an effective forum for reaching some degree of consensus in how countries will participate in action plans to deal with the global crisis, it will be further legitimized for other issues, perhaps.
That continues to allow the G8, by the way, to have its role of being a catalyst. They certainly are more like-minded than the G20 can be. It used to be the industrial democracies, and the so-called Outreach 5, which have now almost become a regular feature of the G8, will continue. I suspect that maybe in 10 years, if the G20 has evolved with not just the issue they're dealing with today but perhaps other issues that it is able to contribute to global solutions through that mechanism, it might become a more prominent mechanism than the G8, and that's good.
But I don't think we should throw out the G8 and say it's all about the G20. There are issues on which the consensus the G8 is able to achieve--or the G7 on financial issues--is an important catalyst around which further work and further action can take place.