Billion Dollar Bureaucrats
link Canada: A billion on summit security well worth it – Yahoo! News.
This may be patently obvious, but if a country needs to spend a billion on security for a summit, maybe the summit should be held somewhere that’s more easily secured, perhaps Labrador or Iqaluit in the Northwest Territories. If the whole point of gathering exalted poo-bahs and geniuses from all nations is for the face to face serious discussions on solving word hunger, yada yada yada, then why even hold it in a metropolitan area?
Spend the money on some infrasture in the vast and secure north of Canada and pump some money into that part of the world. Get the army corp of engineers to build an instant conference room and contract out Starbucks for the coffee and banana bread. The entire security budget can be reduced to the cost of shooing away curious moose. Considering the Conservatives are supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility and common sense, this is a great disappointment. Heck if we wanted all kinds of wasteful boondoggle spending, we would have kept the Liberals in office.
The public safety minister Vince Toews states that this expenditure is “worth it”. ??!! Really? Why? At the core of the issue, the money will be spent to ensure the safety of notionally 20 some odd representatives and their aides and of course their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands or some combination thereof. So if we generously give each entourage 50 people, then that makes security for 1000 people. But let’s really be gracious hosts and allow 100 people per country. That makes the total group count at near 2000 people. Counting on my fingers rapidly, this breaks down into $500,000 per person for this extravaganza or $1,000,000 per person if you use the smaller entourage figure.
Naturally, this number doesn’t include food, tax or gratuities. Vince Toews may want to qualify what is meant by “worth it”. Is it worth it to spend a billion dollars on cops and dogs when you could probably achieve the same result by having a hundred or so army staff secure a Holiday Inn in St. John’s Newfoundland?
We all know the answer to that, but as has been mentioned in an earlier post, the real reason that the exalted summit is being held in Toronto, is….shopping! Yes, the spouses had to be enticed to go along and the only way to do this was if the destination had some decent shopping. Toronto isn’t Hong Kong or Milan, but, hey, you have to keep up the appearance of belt tightening. As far as Labrador, well, how many sealskins can you buy?