Brother can you spare a billion?

Doubting Thomas - Later this month, Canada will host the G8 and G20 meetings. These meetings bring together world leaders from eight and 20 of the world's richest, most powerful countries for informal talks on a wide range of issues.

Now before you go to sleep on me, here's where it gets interesting. The cost of security for this year's three days of meetings is currently at $930 million dollars. That's $70 million shy of a billion, in case you're counting.

For the sake of argument, let's just assume there will be cost overruns and call it an even billion.

Now that billion doesn't cover the food, lodgings and transportation for all these world leaders and their entourages. That's just the price tag for security alone.

How much is a billion dollars? Assuming you earned $50,000 annually (and I don't), you would have to work for 20,000 years and save every cent to make one billion dollars.

That's before taxes, of course.

Those numbers aren't just big to us little people down here in the real world. Liberal MP Mark Holland has called it "the most expensive 72 hours in Canadian history." Auditor General Sheila Fraser has announced that her office will be auditing the bills after the fact.

Ms. Fraser is the same person who released a report on Marine Atlantic late last year. She said the federal government needs to invest $1.6 billion into the crown corporation to bring it up to proper standards.

The feds responded by budgeting $175 million over two years to Marine Atlantic, or about 11 per cent of what Ms. Fraser suggested.

I said the G8 meetings will be "informal" talks and I used that word for a reason. Unlike other international organizations such as The United Nations or The World Bank, the G8 is by definition informal.

There's no official website or physical office for the group. There is simply an agreement that the summit will happen each year. World leaders and their entourages meet to run through topics such as health, trade, energy and the environment.

The summit is a magnet for protesters. Getting eight of the world's most powerful people together in the same room seems like a bad idea in the "post 9/11" world, which is exactly one of the reasons cited for the billion dollar security price tag by the feds.

Perhaps someone could show these leaders how to meet up on Facebook or Skype. That billion would be better spent on the people of Canada.

reporter@gulfnews.ca