Mr. Speaker, Liberal opposition members like to throw around numbers in the range of $20 million, $30 million, $40 million that they know are not realistic.
There are people in the security business who actually know what it costs to put on a conference like this. They know that the conference in London or Pittsburgh did not cost $30 million or $40 million in total. It was up around $1 billion. They have made several comments over the last few days that if we compare apples to apples, that is, if we take all of the security costs into consideration when putting a number to the cost of a G8 or G20 conference, we would come within the same range as what this government is prepared to spend to host these two conferences in Canada.
As a matter of fact, within the last few days $1.5 billion was the figure that came out as being spent for the last conference in Hokkaido, Japan. It was not $20 million, $30 million or $40 million. It was $1.5 billion, which represents the total cost of putting on that conference.
The numbers the Liberals are throwing around represent only a small portion of the actual cost. They know it, but it sounds better for them to say it in the way that they are. They are not being completely honest when it comes to the actual cost.