Toronto the Blue

With Toronto getting ready to host the G20 summit later this month there has been enormous attention given to the costs of holding it in Toronto, costs that are both direct ($1B) and indirect (unknown). Figuring out how much of the $1B of direct costs is truly one-time items is difficult to determine from the outside, but it is still going to be costly. It is of course money that is simply being reallocated from the general tax base to selected points within our domestic economy so the money is not being lost, though perhaps not used to best immediate effect.

The indirect costs are more interesting in that they fall almost exclusively on the shoulders of Toronto residents and businesses. These are potential risks of physical damage due to protests and official security measures, and the loss of economic activity during the summit due to both mandatory and voluntary shut downs of urban space and businesses. Even the Blue Jays are leaving town.

Questions are being asked all around as to the sense of holding this summit in any urban centre due to the excessive security requirements and economic disruption. It's especially curious since the summit participants and the media covering the summit will almost certainly pay no attention at all to the city, and indeed will find it difficult to exit the summit security bubble to see any of it, and of course residents and protesters will be kept quite firmly outside the bubble. This pretty much ensures that any damage caused by protests will fall on the citizenry and their livelihoods, not on the intended audience.

As the government insists that this is all good for Toronto by allegedly giving a boost to future tourism, they are also adamant that they will not cover any of the direct and indirect costs to residents and businesses caused by their activities or those of the protesters. There is no evidence to support that there will be any future boost to tourism, and certainly not that any such boost will compensate for the immediate cost of the summit. It is therefore reasonable to then ask why the government is so steadfast in its position that this summit must be held in Toronto, no matter the cost to taxpayers or to Toronto? I think I have the answer.

A quick perusal of the representation in Parliament for Toronto ridings, especially the more urban 416-area, is a sea or red and orange: Liberal and NDP. Perhaps the message is that if you don't vote Conservative they will gift your city an international summit, complete with their following horde of firebomb-wielding anarchists and malcontents. Consider yourselves warned.