Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear before you this morning to talk about Canada's G8 and G20 summits in June. Hosting a meeting of the world's political leaders is a massive undertaking. Canada hosted two such meetings back to back over the

Government Operations committee  There are actually two funding streams for the G8 and the G20. One covers security and one the organization of the meetings. Personally, I was responsible for organizing all the preparatory meetings, as I mentioned, the ministerial meetings, and so on. I—

Government Operations committee  But I have to stick to a budget for organization too, Mr. Vincent.

Government Operations committee  I started with $249 million.

Government Operations committee  That was for the two meetings.

Government Operations committee  That was not the budget we started with because we had to—

Government Operations committee  Like Mr. Elcock, we prepared briefs for submission to cabinet for G8 preparations. At the end of September 2009, when the G20 summit was announced, we redid the process and we added the G20 budget. The two budgets together, from my end, come to $249 million.

Government Operations committee  The G20 announcement was made by the Prime Minister in Korea in November. Starting right then, we began to prepare documents in order to draw up our budgets. We worked with experts and they took part in the budgeting process. Of course, we used some of the fundamentals that had a

Government Operations committee  Yes, Mr. Chairman. I'll begin by addressing some of the benefits for the City of Toronto. With the Olympics and the G-8/G-20 being held in Canada, it very much was Canada's year, with the eyes of the world focused on us. In terms of a message I received from Toronto tourism, th

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, the fake lake was actually an idea that I think was a wild success. The interesting dimension of that is that--

Government Operations committee  --we took the opportunity to promote Canada as a high-tech, innovative society by leveraging the presence of the 3,700 media who were there. If, Mr. Chair, the member looks at the Olympic model, he'll note that most of the provinces had pavilions in Vancouver to leverage potentia

Government Operations committee  First of all, the reflecting pool was one dimension of this particular quarter, which comprised three parts. You had the element that was highlighting the Muskoka region. We had an intermediary zone where we highlighted Canadian cuisine. And we had a connectivity dimension where

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I think those projects, which were deemed to be G-8 infrastructure projects, are not an element of either my work or Mr. Elcock's work.

Government Operations committee  I think the G-8 dimension is a bit of a misnomer. They are infrastructure projects and are administered, if I'm not mistaken, by the infrastructure individuals.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chairman, excuse me if I gave the impression that the corridor was solely about a fake lake. There was a reflecting pond. That reflecting pond was used by thousands of journalists over the course of the meeting, including breakfast television in the U.K., which wanted to do a