Evidence of meeting #45 for Public Safety and National Security in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was summit.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Anchor and Senior Editor, TVO
I'm not only aware of it; I participated in it.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Okay. Fair enough.
Ms. Prokop, your group has younger people, young entrepreneurs. This was the first opportunity you had...?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Youth Business Foundation
That's correct. It was an inaugural G-20. There was a smaller G-8 event in Stresa the year before, in Italy.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Could you tell us how you were received by the larger body that was meeting at the G-20?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Youth Business Foundation
I'm sorry. Are you referring to the delegates?
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Did you have access to government officials? Was there any interrelationship between them?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Youth Business Foundation
Our summit was officially endorsed; however, we did not receive any government money at all for our summit. We did have a press conference at the end of the summit when the Honourable Tony Clement came to receive the communiqué. Also, it was also opened by Mr. Rob Moore, and Minister Van Loan came to the closing event.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
It brought young people together from all of the G-20 nations?
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Youth Business Foundation
There were 200 international delegates. Just to give you an idea, our colleagues in France are expecting a summit that will have 600, so it's growing substantially.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
So they had an opportunity to see Canada up front and personal.
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Youth Business Foundation
Yes, absolutely. But most importantly, they had an opportunity to talk about how young people can positively work together to work positively with government to build policies. From our point of view, we feel that it was a terrific event, and we didn't have any security issues at all.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Kirton, you have studied these internationally for a number of years. We sometimes tend to focus only on what happens in Canada, but you're well aware of what has happened in other places. Although my colleague talked about having it in one location, it is my understanding that one member of the G-8 must host a meeting each year. That makes it cycle around.
Canada has hosted other international summits. We talked about this one being in the Muskoka region. We've held these different kinds of international summits in small communities at different times--the APEC summit and so on. Is this one unique or is it similar to the pattern of other international summits we've hosted?
Co-director of the G20 Research Group and Director of the G8 Research Group, University of Toronto
I think the broad generalization is that for this particular class and kind of international institution, the pluri-lateral summit institutions, the larger the number of members--such as the APEC leaders meeting in 1997 in Vancouver, the Summit of the Americas, with 34 leaders, in Quebec City in April 2001, and of course the G-20 in Toronto--the tendency is, for I think understandable reasons, that they have to be held in larger cities.
But for the smaller G-8, the tendency, and perhaps the Canadian tradition, has been to hold them in smaller resort-like settings, in part given the unique advantage of having the event leaders looking each other in the face, relaxing, realizing they're all in it together, and interacting as human beings, rather than reading speeches at each other, which can come alive as it did at Deerhurst.
The Canadian tradition, of course, was set by the Right Honourable Pierre Trudeau in 1981. He had the choice of hosting Canada's first what was then a G-7 summit just in Ottawa, in the capital city, but said no, that he wanted to share it. He wanted to do a significant portion of it in Montebello, Quebec, despite some of the known disadvantages the dual hosting would bring.
So the smaller the communities, the bigger the benefits. The historic Halifax summit of 1995 was held in the largest of the smallest communities, but the Canadian tradition does go back to Pierre Trudeau in 1981.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Regarding the cost, I suggest to you that the numbers that have been provided have been done very openly. Do you see that in other countries, that all of the costs are made transparent?
Co-director of the G20 Research Group and Director of the G8 Research Group, University of Toronto
I have never seen it before in any other country, and I've never seen it before in Canada.
For those close to this particular, specialized form of research, the operational wisdom of those producing the summits is that you simply never identify in advance what the costs are, partly for the good reason that you actually never know until all the bills are in, and then, when all the bills are in, which can take a rather long time--
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Is it also fair to say that if you're not transparent, you don't have to answer a lot of questions about it?
Co-director of the G20 Research Group and Director of the G8 Research Group, University of Toronto
Oh, very much so. I think there was an exceptionally large degree of public commentary and parliamentary commentary on the announced estimates for the Toronto summit in the time leading up to it, even though one of the natural news stories in the lead-up to the summit was how much it costs and is it worth the time and trouble.... But Toronto/Muskoka was exceptional in that regard.
Conservative
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Kirton, is Jenilee Guebert a colleague of yours?
Co-director of the G20 Research Group and Director of the G8 Research Group, University of Toronto
She is indeed.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
She testified before this committee last week. I was going to ask you about something she said, because when she was answering questions, she agreed with me that it was not necessary to split the summits between Huntsville and Toronto, and said that we, as a result of doing so, spent over $200 million more in taxpayers' dollars. Would you agree with that comment of hers?
Co-director of the G20 Research Group and Director of the G8 Research Group, University of Toronto
Well, it was an excellent question. I did have a chance to read the committee's proceedings from that session, so I've had a longer opportunity to reflect on that point.
Important in my thinking, before I come to a judgment, are a few considerations. One, we knew from a very early stage that Prime Minister Harper had announced that the G-8 summit, held in our normal year, would be in Huntsville. He did that long before G-20 summits had been invented for global governance life. My former colleague, Michael Ignatieff, publicly assured the voters of Canada that were he elected prime minister he would keep the G-8 summit in Muskoka. Again, that was before the fact that Canada would be hosting the G-20 summit.
So to come to the end, it really depends on where you start. Some considerable portion of the expenses to prepare the Muskoka site were actually incurred before we knew we would be hosting the G-20--
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
I just want to be clear, and I only have five minutes to get some scope on this.
