2010-06-15
The expanding G8 adds up to a G20 in Huntsville, while Toronto’s G20 will be a G33 or 34.
Tonda MacCharles Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA – The G what? What the….?
The G8 summit in Huntsville – which is the Group of Seven large industrialized nations plus Russia which joined in 1997 – was already a mathematical puzzle. The European Union participates and so really, it was a G9 from the get-go.
Actually, it’s G10, because the EU sends two representatives, the heads of the European Commission and the European Council.
So if you’re counting, it was to be Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the two EU guys (yes, they are guys), meeting in Huntsville.
But these have become the ever-expanding summits.
On Sunday, Harper quietly announced that he has invited 10 more guests to the G8 (G10) meeting; seven African countries (Algeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, and South Africa) and three more counterparts from the Americas (Colombia, Jamaica and Haiti) which will attend a “special session” at the G8 Summit in the Muskokas.
First, the G8 or should we say, the G10, leaders will meet alone. Then they hold an “outreach” session with the seven invited African leaders. G10+7=G17. After that, they will be joined by the Colombian, Jamaican and Haitian leaders for another “outreach” session. G17+ 3 = G20. The “outreach” group’s leaders will not bring big entourages or even stay for dinner. And they’re not all invited to the G20 in Toronto.
But suddenly, it’s a G20 in a place Harper deemed too small to handle the G20.
The other G20 – the real G20 – summit will still be held in Toronto, and the government argues, is a different kettle of fish.
The Toronto G20 will include the G8 nations, plus the European Union, plus political leaders from 11 other nations: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey. G8 + 1 + 11 = G20. (Again, counting the two reps for the EU, really it should be the G21).
They all bring their “sherpas,” their finance ministers, and in many cases deputy finance ministers, plus other officials.
And…guess what Toronto?
The G20 actually becomes a G33 at one point. (Or a G34, if you count the EU’s two reps.)
Harper has invited to the G20 the leaders of five other nations’– Netherlands, Spain, Vietnam, and again, Ethiopia and Malawi. That makes G20+5 = G25.
Also attending the Toronto G20 summit are the heads of seven other international organizations – the United Nations, the World Bank, the OECD, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the Financial Stability Bank, and the International Labour Organization. G25+7=G32. (Or G34, again, counting the two EU reps).
Add in all the key officials, including central bank governors, and one seating plan for meetings during the Toronto summit actually provides for what seems to be a G50 meeting.
The Harper government is sticking to its line that Huntsville could not accommodate all the leaders and entourages of a full G20 summit.
The need to secure two separate summit venues, back-to-back, was again the explanation offered Monday in the Commons for the bulk of the $1-billion price tag. The government also defends spending millions more on the “promotion” of Canada as a business and tourism destination.
Liberal MP Bob Rae says that eventually there will be a “consolidation” of these two summits – G8 and G20 – if not a permanent setting for a logistics coordinator because, “I think everyone is going to agree that the costs of this nature are out of sight and we have to find a better way to do this.”
“All the satire aside, the costs associated with this event throw into much clearer light the problems of improvising every six months or every year or every couple of years.”
Former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, who as Canada’s finance minister helped found the G20 finance ministers, lobbied heavily for an L20 forum – a leaders’ group –to draw in the perspective of the world’s emerging economies into deliberations on how to solve global problems.
It didn’t happen until 2008 as the global economy went into a tailspin, and leaders got together in Washington at the invitation of President George W. Bush.
Two more meetings followed in 2009 – in London and Pittsburgh—to coordinate the global spending stimulus package to shock ailing economies back to health.
It was at the Pittsburgh meeting that the leaders agreed the G20 would be the premier forum for international economic cooperation beyond the current economic crisis.
Still, Harper insisted two things: the G8 still had relevance as the principal forum for dealing with “peace and security, as well as democracy and development.”
“If the world’s richest and most powerful nations do not deal with the world’s hardest and most intractable problems, they simply will not be dealt with,” he said, justifying the need for the G8 to continue.
But Martin today wonders how long it will last, and calls the G20—“a great Canadian initiative.”
“I certainly believe that the G7 finance ministers has a purpose, because they’re seven compatible economies and if you take a look at those bank issues, the problem is within the G7, it’s not right now an Asian problem. It’s a European-North American problem.”
“But as far as the G8 leaders (group) is concerned. I think the jury’s out,” said Martin in a telephone interview.
He said it is clear that “the world steering committee, which at one time was the G8, is now the G20. So the G8 will have to find – if it’s going to continue – . . . another role.”
He said whether it is security, climate change, overseas development or bank regulation, “I cannot think of an issue (where you would not require) China, India, Brazil at the table.’’