Mr. Speaker, in a column in The Globe and Mail on May 28, Jeffrey Simpson said:
A corner of Muskoka is being turned into a militarized zone, downtown Toronto shut off, baseball games moved out of town, thousands of police and security agents mobilized, to say nothing of helicopters, planes and, for all we know, submarines in Lake Ontario.
He further said:
The whole thing is over the top and way too expensive for three days that bid fair to be a non-event in substance.
If we accept that an urban setting is not the proper place for this type of event and the fact that people are concerned about the military in the streets, why would the government not consider simply holding the whole event in a secure military base where the costs should be almost zero?
I want the government member to respond to that and tell us why that could not have been done.