Mr. Speaker, I am not familiar with Jeffrey Simpson, choosing not to read The Globe and Mail on a regular basis, but I will quote Sheila Fraser on the costs. The hon. member might have heard of Ms. Fraser, the Auditor General of Canada. She said:
Obviously $1 billion is a lot of money, but I think we have to recognize that security is expensive. There are a lot of people that are involved over a long period of time. We may think that the meetings only last for a few days, but all the preparations involve extensive planning, extensive coordination for months before that and I think we have to be really, really careful.
Toronto was chosen. There has been some debate regarding whether the locations were appropriate. Hon. members cannot decide whether they want to hold them in an urban area or a rural area because they also criticized the government when one of the summits was proposed to be in rural Ontario. The reality is wherever these summits are located, there is going to be security. There is going to be expensive security. We owe that not only to Canadians who reside in those areas, but we owe that to the delegations and the world leaders who will be coming. We also owe that security to the people who will be engaged in lawful protests. They too need to be protected. We do not want to see any violent incidents or protests that get out of hand.