Tuesday, July 06, 2010

G8-G20 Meetings

The G8/G20 meetings in Toronto have come and gone along with a billion dollars in security costs alone. Riots and the resulting damage in Toronto left a bad image of Toronto and Canada for the entire world to see. These meetings in previous years in other countries around the world amounted to a fraction of Canada’s costs. The government is left to defend these lavish expenses until the opposition or the taxpayers decide to move on to some other issue. Herein lies a serious problem. When the people of this country give up in despair on issues that should matter to them their government will increasingly govern with disregard for the very people they were elected to serve.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has surpassed the liberals on a number of fronts. Most notably, his apparent obsession with power, authority, control and lack of transparency makes former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau look better with each passing day.

So what did we get out of these costly meetings? The media reported that Canada won a significant victory in securing deficit reduction targets for advanced countries. The plan is to cut deficits in half by 2013 and stabilize debt loads by 2016. Personally, I am not impressed. Advanced countries should not have to be told by Canada or anyone else to keep their deficits and debt loads in check. Individual Canadians have to do that out of absolute necessity at some point. Why should our government or other so called advanced countries not logically come to that same conclusion?